A Quote by Thomas Merton

Actions are the doors and windows of being. Unless we act, we have no way of knowing what we are.

Thomas Merton

Quote Topics

Act Actions Being Doors Knowing The Doors Unless Way Windows

Quote Author

Thomas Merton
American - Author
January 31, 1915 - December 10, 1968

I bought Windows 2.0, Windows 3.0, Windows 3.1415926, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows RSVP, The Best of Windows, Windows Strikes Back, Windows Does Dallas, and Windows Let's All Buy Bill Gates a House the Size of Vermont.

Dave Barry

This building we're in has doors and windows. If we close the doors and windows, we can't get out. People lock themselves inside a house of delusions. But they're only delusions. They can leave anytime. Actually there is no house to leave. There's not even any leaving. What we see are flowers in the sky, the moon in the water. As for the meditative powers of Zen masters like Hsu-yun, sometimes it's useful to meditate and sometimes it isn't.

Bill Porter

What interest, zest, or excitement can there be in achieving the right way, unless we are enabled to feel that the wrong way is also a possible and a natural way, nay, more, a menacing and an imminent way? And what sense can there be in condemning ourselves for taking the wrong way, unless we need have done nothing of the sort, unless the right way was open to us as well? I cannot understand the willingness to act, no matter how we feel, without the belief that acts are really good and bad.

William James

And it shall be my endeavour to reveal thee in my actions, knowing it is thy power gives me strength to act.

Rabindranath Tagore

Listen. Look. Desire is a house. Desire needs closed space. Desire runs out of doors or windows, or slats or pinpricks, it can’t fit under the sky, too large. Close the doors. Close the windows. As soon as you laugh from nerves or make a joke or say something just to say something or get all involved with the bushes, then you blow open a window in your house of desire and it can’t heat up as well. Cold draft comes in.

Aimee Bender

I must act now without knowing the results. Thus, I give my actions their only possible meaning for me.

Hugh Prather

On the other hand, pot opens windows and doors that you may not be able to get through any other way.

George Carlin

When you go home, fill the house with joy so that the light of it will stream out the windows and doors and illuminate even the darkness. It is just as easy that way as any in the world.

Robert Green Ingersoll

You do not separate the human being from the actions he does or the actions which surround him, but you see what it is like to break these actions up in different ways, to allow passion - and it is passion - to appear for each person in his own way.

Merce Cunningham

Clay is molded to form a cup, But it is on its non-being that the utility of the cup depends. Doors and windows are cut out to make a room, But it is on its non-being that the utility of the room depends. Therefore turn being into advantage, and turn non-being into utility.

Laozi

It's not about knowing the key to success, but knowing how to use it and which doors to open

Arsi Nami

But fear doesn't need doors and windows. It works from the inside.

Andrew Clements

I opened the doors and windows of America, and let the air and sunshine in.

Elsie de Wolfe

My view is, in between environmental determinism and personal responsibility, we say, "where there's a will there's a way." It's not true. You really need both and they're somewhat independent. We must both cultivate will and pave the way. If you inspire an impassioned people so that they have the will but there's no way, all around them are walls with no doors or windows. It's terribly frustrating. On the other hand, if you put a very nice way at their feet and they have no will to follow it, that doesn't produce anything very good either. Will is not way. You need both.

David Katz

I believe in the power of motion, the wisdom of gravity, the emptiness of true love, the fact that there is no way out but through the body, no way up unless we all go together, no way down unless we follow the beat, no way in unless we embrace the dark.