If we seek paradise outside ourselves, we cannot have paradise in our hearts.

—Thomas Merton

paradise self-sufficiency

About Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968), religious name M. Louis, was an American Trappist monk, Catholic priest, theologian, mystic, poet, and writer. He was a professed member of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, near Bardstown, Kentucky, living there from 1941 to his death.

More quotations from Thomas Merton

Love is all fire; and so heaven and hell are the same place.

—Thomas Merton

love fire hell heaven

God [is] hidden within me. I find Him by hiding in the silence in which He is concealed.

—Thomas Merton

The silence of the forest is my bride and the sweet dark warmth of the whole world is my love, and out of the heart of that dark warmth comes the secret that is heard only in silence, but it is the root of all the secrets that are whispered by all the lovers in their beds all over the world.

—Thomas Merton

Teenagers have no monopoly on [adolescent behavior], except insofar as we are in fact a teenage society — a society that likes to play "chicken" not with fast cars, but with ballistic missiles.

—Thomas Merton

Why do monks live in seclusion? That is asking why does a scientist work in a laboratory, or why does a sailor go on a ship or why does a duck swim in water. Why does a man go to his bedroom and get in bed when he wants to go to sleep? Why doesn't he lie down in the middle of the street? A monk seeks silence and solitude because there his mind and heart can relax and expand and attain to a new perspective: there too he can hear the Word of God. . . . An apt saying of the Muslim Sufis comes to mind here: "The hen does not lay eggs in the marketplace.

—Thomas Merton

More quotations tagged with “paradise”

Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only much, much better.

—Laurie Anderson

now paradise better

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

—Joni Mitchell

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.

love paradise tenderness

Traveling is a fool's paradise. . . . I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

identity self travel paradise

To hope for Paradise is to live in Paradise, a very different thing from actually getting there.

—Vita Sackville-West

History

30 Nov 2013 Added