Thomas Merton

I have recently come to discover the works of Thomas Merton... an early 20th century writer, poet and Roman Catholic Franciscan priest. Every time I read excerpts from his works or quotes from his writings I am completely taken aback at how I instantly relate to his writings. I am having a hard time focusing today, being somewhat lazy in my studying and I needed some inspiration to keep me going. Just a few quotes that I came across today that make my heart happy and hopeful.

"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to... fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them."
— Thomas Merton

"Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything."
— Thomas Merton

"You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope."
— Thomas Merton

"Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy."
— Thomas Merton

"A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops
thinking about how to live and begins to live."
— Thomas Merton

"Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost"
— Thomas Merton



Hope you enjoyed this. +AMDG+