Thomas Merton Quotes

Self-sufficiency is the enemy of salvation. If you are self-sufficient, you have no need of God. If you have no need of God, you do not seek Him. If you do not seek Him, you will not find Him.

Ours is not a problem of the intellect but of spiritual poverty. That is why we need a Savior.

Far better it is for you to say: "I am a sinner," than to say: "I have no need of religion." The empty can be filled, but the self-intoxicated have no room for God.

The first link between my soul and Christ is not my goodness but my badness, not my merit but my misery, not my riches but my need.

We who are rich are often demanding and difficult. We shut ourselves up in our apartments and may even use a watchdog to defend our property. Poor people, of course, have nothing to defend and often share the little they have. When people have all the material things they need, they seem not to need each other. They are self-sufficient. There is no interdependence. There is no love.

It pleases our heavenly Father when we acknowledge and confess to Him our inability to run our own lives. That is what we are doing when we say, "Father, help me! I need You!"

Sometimes God has to remind you that you're weak so that you can be set free from your "self-sufficiency."

Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence, limitless power and a cry for help?

Our awareness of God starts where self-sufficiency ends.

As long as a man is persuaded that he can make even the smallest contribution to his salvation, he remains self-confident and does not utterly despair of himself, and so is not humbled before God. Such a man plans out for himself a position, an occasion, a work, which shall bring him final salvation, but which will not.

Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

Gandhi’s idea of swadeshi—that local societies should put their own resources and capacities to use to meet their needs as a basic element of freedom—is becoming increasingly relevant. We cannot afford to forget that we need self-rule, especially in this world of globalization.

The deeper we grow in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the poorer we become - the more we realize that everything in life is a gift. The tenor of our lives becomes one of humble and joyful thanksgiving. Awareness of our poverty and ineptitude causes us to rejoice in the gift of being called out of darkness into wondrous light and translated into the kingdom of God's beloved Son.

The gospel is not for you who can save yourselves, but for those who are lost.

But the very act of pausing in a busy day to pray is an act of weakening pride in my life, acknowledging that I am a dependent creature. I am not self sufficient.

I have a great need for Christ: I have a great Christ for my need.

He who says he never needs help, most does.

Our great need is to discover that Jesus is all we need.

There's only one requirement for enjoying God's grace: being broke . . . and knowing it.

Only an arrogant man will claim to be independent of everybody else and be self-contained.

The ragamuffin gospel says we can't lose, because we have nothing to lose.

The wretched and miserable should turn to their Saviour first, yet they do not hope in Him until all other hope is exhausted.

If we should be saved and become saints, we ought always to stand at the gates of the Divine mercy to beg and pray for, as an alms, all that we need.

Even in my prime, I need God in my life because without God, we're nothing.