Thomas Keating Quotes

Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?

No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.

Liberty is the condition of duty, the guardian of conscience. It grows as conscience grows. The domains of both grow together. Liberty is safety from all hindrances, even sin. So that Liberty ends by being Free Will.

I believe firmly that in making ethical decisions, man has the prerogative of true freedom of choice.

The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.

Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.

Human nature is evil, and goodness is caused by intentional activity.

Were there no desire there would be no virtue, and because one man desires what another does not, who shall say whether the child of his desire be Vice or Virtue?

Bur what is Freedom? Rightly understood, A Universal license to be good.

The more...we consider man to be free, the less we can say, that he can neglect to use reason, or choose evil in preference to good

Freedom and slavery, the one is the name of virtue, and the other of vice, and both are acts of the will.

Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed. Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world.

Love God, then do what you will.

Goodness consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward thing we are.

I am such a good man, at bottom, such a good man, how is it that nobody ever noticed it?

Every person in every generation has a choice: to obey God or to do his own thing.

It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? Deep and hard questions, little 6655321.

There is no slave but the creature that wills against its Creator.

Free will, though it makes evil possible, also makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

An idol tells people exactly what to believe, God presents them with choices they have to make for themselves. The difference is far from insignificant; before the idol men remain dependent children, before God they are burdened and at the same time liberated to participate in the decisions of endless creation.

The one who is [truly] imprisoned is the one whose heart is imprisoned from Allah and the captivated one is the one whose desires have enslaved him.

You take souls for vegetables.... The gardener can decide what will become of his carrots but no one can choose the good of others for them.

The eternal not ourselves that makes for righteousness.

You have qualities which I had not before supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature. You have some touches of the angel in you.