Thomas Merton Quotes

. If you believe that your nation is divinely ordained to rule Europe, and you must struggle to establish its supremacy, is that a religious doctrine or a nationalist one? In Germany especially, the whole super-nationalist ideology of the post-1871 empire is heavily imbued with religious teaching, chiefly Lutheran, and frankly viewing the new empire as the germ of the kingdom of God on Earth.

There is no instinct that has been so maligned, suppressed, abused, and distorted by religious teaching as the instinct of sex.

To exclude religious teaching altogether from education... is a very dangerous and curious tendency. The result is to give paganism a new importance and influence.

Often a man goes on for years imaging that the religious teaching that had been imparted to him since childhood is still intact, while all the time there is not a trace of it left in him.

We would labor earnestly to raise a believer in salvation by free will into a believer in salvation by grace, for we long to see all religious teaching built upon the solid rock of truth and not upon the sand of imagination. At the same time, our grand object is not the revision of opinions, but the regeneration of natures. We should bring men to Christ, not to our own particular views of Christianity.

Miserable indeed is that religious teaching which calls itself Christian, and yet contains nothing of the cross.

The religious need of the human mind remains alive, never more so, but it demands a teaching which can be understood. Slowly an apprehension of the intimate, usable power of God is growing among us, and a growing recognition of the only worth-while application of that power-in the improvement of the world.

You know what Oscar Wilde said, ma'am? He said, "nothing that is worth knowing can be taught". Nothing personal, ma'am... Carry on.

We are not responsible for the behavior of anyone that goes contrary to what we teach, any more than the Pope of Rome or the Archbishop of Canterbury or a religious leader who teaches moral law and values can be charged with the errant behavior of a parishioner or congregant who may violate their moral teachings. That is on the individual.

Great stories teach you something. That's one reason I haven't slipped into some sort of retirement: I always feel like I'm learning something new.

Learning is a friend on the journey; a wife in the house; medicine in sickness; and religious merit is the only friend after death.

The ideal condition would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct; but since we are all likely to go astray, The reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach

Who keeps the old akindle and adds new knowledge is fitted to be a teacher.

I wish to become a teacher of the Truth.

I got so tired of hearing those proverbs when I was a child. Now I use them all the time. Sometimes they are the best way to say what needs to be said. I teach them to my students. I have a collection of proverbs for class discussion and writing assignments.

Perhaps our teachings seem less religious and more technical, like psychology, so they are easier for secular people to use.

Time waxing old can many a lesson teach.

Just as the great oceans have but one taste, the taste of salt, so too there is but one taste fundamental to all true teachings of the way, and this is the taste of freedom.

We learn the most from fools ... yet we pay them back with the worst ingratitude.

The establishment of Civil and Religious Liberty was the Motive which induced me to the Field - the object is attained - and it now remains to be my earnest wish & prayer, that the Citizens of the United States could make a wise and virtuous use of the blessings placed before them.

Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves.

When the sage points at the moon, all that the idiot sees is the finger.

Do not begin to teach others until the Lord has taught you.

In the world we live in, one fool makes many fools, but one sage only a few sages.

The object of (Christian) faith is not the teaching but the Teacher.