Thomas Merton Quotes

What ever purifies the heart also fortifies it.

Start the practice of self-control with some penance; begin with fasting.

The highest strength is acquired not in overcoming the world, but in overcoming one's self. Learn to be cruel to thyself, to withstand thy appetites, to bear thy sufferings, and thou shalt become free and able.

We conquer ourselves by learning patience, for she gives to us our longed for victory only in the surrender of self.

The whole point of a sacrifice is that you give up something you never really wanted in the first place. People are doing it around you all the time. They give up their careers, say - or their beliefs - or sex.

Fasting is, first and foremost, an exercise for identifying and managing adversity in all its forms. With faith, in full conscience, fasting calls women and men to an extra degree of self-awareness.

The vigor and power and comfort of our spiritual life depends on our mortification of deeds of the flesh.

It is my own firm belief that the strength of the soul grows in proportion as you subdue the flesh.

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.

Sufis teach that we first must battle and destroy the evil within ourselves by shining upon it the good within, and then we learn to battle the evil in others by helping their higher selves gain control of their lower selves.

The desert Arab found no joy like the joy of voluntarily holding back. He found luxury in abnegation, renunciation, self restraint. He made nakedness of the mind as sensuous as nakedness of the body. He saved his own soul, perhaps, and without danger, but in a hard selfishness.

You will not stop. The pain is necessary, especially the pain of hunger. It reassures you that you are strong, can withstand anything, that you are not a slave to your body, you don't have to give in to its whining.

Self-denial does not belong to religion as characteristic of it; it belongs to human life; the lower nature must always be denied when you are trying to rise to a higher sphere.

Spirit, like body, needs to be trained. So I think it's necessary to make your spirit stronger. And for he who believes, anything is possible.

There is more security in self-denial, mortification, and other like virtues, than in an abundance of tears.

Happie is hee that chastens himselfe.

To set the mind above the appetites is the end of abstinence, which one of the Fathers observes to be not a virtue, but the groundwork of virtue.

Reflect upon the defects of your character: thoroughly realize their evils and the transient pleasures they give you, and firmly will that you shall try your best not to yield to them the next time.

The battle for self-discipline may leave you a bit bruised and battered but always a better person.

SPIRITUAL EXERCISES whereby to conquer oneself, and order one's life, without being influenced in one's decision by any inordinate affection.

Ask for a valiant heart which has banished the fear of death, which looks upon length of days as one of the least of nature's gifts; which is able to suffer every kind of hardship, is proof against anger, craves for nothing, and reckons the trials and gruelling labours of Hercules as more desirable blessings than the amorous ease and the banquets and cushions of Sardanapallus. The things that I recommend you can grant to yourself.

Give up all desire for enjoyment in earth or heaven. Control the organs of the senses and control the mind. Bear every misery without even knowing that you are miserable. Think of nothing but spiritual freedom.

The test of progress is the amount of renunciation that one has attained.

We sought therefore to amend our will, and not to suffer it through despite to languish long time in error.

I know you think that I have some kind of perfect, unyielding self-control, but that's not actually the case. - Edward Cullen