Seeds of Contemplation Quotes

“If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy. If you write for men--you may make some money and you may give someone a little joy and you may make a noise in the world, for a little while. If you write for yourself, you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted that you will wish that you were dead.”
― Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation

“Hurry ruins saints as well as artists.”
― Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation

“The fruitfulness of our lives depends in large measure in our ability to doubt our own words and to question the value of our own work. The man who completely trusts his own estimate of himself is doomed to sterility.”
― Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation

“Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self. I wind my experiences around myself and cover myself with glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface. But there is no substance under the things with which I am clothed, I am hollow, and my structure of pleasures and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me I am my own mistake.”
― Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation

“Algunos creen que basta con tener una virtud, como ser bondadoso, indulgente o caritativo, sin preocuparse del resto. Pero si eres altruista de un modo y egoísta de otros veinticinco modos, tu virtud no te hará mucho bien. De hecho, probablemente resultará no ser otra cosa que la variedad vigesimosexta del mismo egoísmo, disfrazada de virtud.”
― Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation