A Quote by Thomas Merton

We stumble and fall constantly, even when we are most enlightened.

Thomas Merton

Quote Topics

Constantly Enlightened Even Fall Most Stumble

Quote Author

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

We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.

Thomas Merton

It doesn't matter how far you might rise. At some point you are bound to stumble because if you’re constantly doing what we do, raising the bar. If you're constantly pushing yourself higher, higher the law of averages not to mention the Myth of Icarus predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do I want you to know this, remember this: there is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.

Oprah Winfrey

The interesting thing is that in everyday life, I fail to see the most ordinary things. I often stumble and sometimes I even fall over. But when I draw or look at a painting, I go into a sort of overdrive and just see things differently than other people.

Wolfgang Beltracchi

Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design.

Adam Ferguson

A mature person does not fall in love, he or she rises in love. Only immature people fall; they stumble and fall down in love. Somehow they were managing and standing. Now they cannot manage and they cannot stand. They were always ready to fall on the ground and to creep. They don't have the backbone, the spine; they don't have the integrity to stand alone.

Rajneesh

The longer I live the more I think of the quality of fortitude... men who fall, pick themselves up and stumble on, fall again, and are trying to get back up when they die.

Theodore Roosevelt

Hiding is not an option and you're going to step out and you're going to make mistakes. I'm going to look stupid. I'm going to say things I want to retract. I'm going to sing notes I wish I could have back, there's just no getting around the stumble, but if you stumble enough times you're going to fall off the edge and have no choice but to freakin' fly.

Ben Harper

Every stumble is not a fall, and every fall does not mean failure.

Oprah Winfrey

The only person that ever stumbles is a guy moving forward. You don't stumble backwards; you stumble forward, and you never stumble when you're stationary. So don't worry about stumbling. Keep pushing it forward.

James Carville

A stumble may prevent a fall.

Thomas Fuller

Let the rain of unhappy and tragic experiences fall, as sometimes it inevitably must, even in the lives of the enlightened masters. If your mind has become one with nirvana, you will remain happy at all times.

Frederick Lenz

Where you stumble and fall, there you will find gold.

Joseph Campbell

I know that the blacks, take them half enlightened and ignorant, are more humane and merciful than the most enlightened and refined European that can be found in all the earth.

David Walker

Most of us have participated in the trust exercise in which one person falls back and is caught by a peer. Even if the catch is made a hundred times in a row, the trust is broken forever if the friend lets you fall the next time as a joke. Even if he swears he is sorry and will never let you fall again, you can never fall back without a seed of doubt.