A Quote by Thomas Merton

The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people. But the man who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his own loneliness, and to prefer its reality to the illusion of merely natural companionship, comes to know the invisible companionship of God. Such a one is alone with God in all places, and he alone truly enjoys the companionship of other men, because he loves them in God in Whom their presence is not tiresome, and because of Whom his own love for them can never know satiety.

Thomas Merton

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Alone Alone With God Anything Because Companionship Fears God He Man Himself His How How Much Illusion Invisible Know Learns Loneliness Lonely Love Loves Man Matter May Men Merely Much Natural Never Other Own Peace People Places Prefer Presence Reality Recollection Satiety Solitude Surround Them Tiresome Truly Whom Will

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

The Lord is near! You're not alone. You may feel alone. You may think you're alone. But there's never a moment in which you face life without help. God is near. God repeatedly pledges his proverbial presence to his people. Don't assume God is watching from a distance. Avoid the quicksand that bears the marker "God has left you!" Don't indulge this lie. If you do, your problem will be amplified by a sense of loneliness. It's one thing to face a challenge, but to face it all alone? Isolation creates a downward cycle of fret.

Max Lucado

All men ought to think of Christ because of the office Christ fills between God and man. He is the eternal Son of God through whom alone the Father can be known, approached, and served. He is the appointed Mediator between God and man through whom alone we can be reconciled with God, pardoned, justified, and saved.

J. C. Ryle

Great eagles fly alone; great lions hunt alone; great souls walk alone-alone with God. Such loneliness is hard to endure, and impossible to enjoy unless God accompanied. Prophets are lone men; they walk alone, pray alone and God makes them alone.

Leonard Ravenhill

The soul that has been enriched by communion with God will not be dismayed by isolation but will welcome solitude. He will seek not the crowd but the closet, and emerging will never walk alone, for he has unseen companionship.

Frances J Roberts

I learned about not just being with someone because I don't want to be alone: being willing to be alone, and then find something that feels right and just reaching for companionship for companionship's sake. Not letting drama lead my life.

Amy Landecker

The man who knows God but does not know his own misery, becomes proud. The man who knows his own misery but does not know God, ends in despair...the knowledge of Jesus Christ constitutes the middle course because in him we find both God and our own misery. Jesus Christ is therefore a God whom we approach without pride, and before whom we humble ourselves without despair.

Blaise Pascal

Every man who truly loves a woman, and every woman who truly loves a man, hopes and dreams that their companionship will last forever. But marriage is a covenant sealed by authority. If that authority is of the state alone, it will endure only while the state has jurisdiction, and that jurisdiction ends with death. But add to the authority of the state the power of the endowment given by Him who overcame death, and that companionship will endure beyond life if the parties to the marriage live worthy of the promise.

Gordon B. Hinckley

A man is never alone, not only because he is with himself and his own thoughts, but because he is with the Devil, who ever consorts with our solitude.

Thomas Browne

We choose--or choose not--to be alone when we decide whom we will accept as our fellows, and whom we will reject. Thus an eremite in a mountain is in company, because the birds and coneys, the initiates whose words live in his 'forest books,' and the winds--the messengers of the Increate--are his companions. Another man, living in the midst of millions, may be alone, because there are none but enemies and victims around him.

Gene Wolfe

Whoever has God truly as a companion, is with him in all places, both on the streets, and among people, as well as in church, or in the desert or in a monastic cell...Why is this so? It is so because such a person possesses God alone, keeping their gaze fixed upon God, and thus all things become God for him or her. Such people be a God in all their deeds and in all the places they go, and it is God alone who is the author of all their deeds.

Meister Eckhart

In the present age, man proves his separation from his Creator by his spirit of self-sufficienc y and positive rejection of God. The present issue between God and man is one of whether man will accept God's estimate of him, abandon his hopeless self-struggle, and cast himself only on God who alone is sufficient to accomplish his needed transformation.

Lewis Sperry Chafer

I am convinced that all our attempts to change the letter of the law and to reeducate people have been, and are, merely band-aid solutions for a fatal hemorrhage. The system will never change because our starting point is flawed. The secular view of man can neither give the grandeur that God alone can give, nor can it see the evil within the human heart that God alone can reveal and cure, for atheism implicitly denudes each individual of the grand image God has imprinted upon His creation.

Ravi Zacharias

No man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone.

John Calvin

As to those in whom the will of God is not inwardly accomplished,-because there is no inward life in them, for they are altogether outward,-upon them the will of God is wrought as alone it can be; appearing at first sight bitter and ungracious, though in reality merciful and loving in the highest degree. To those who do not love God, all things must work together immediately for pain and torment, until, by means of the tribulation, they are led to salvation at last.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

A true leader must have enough backbone to stand alone - even when the crowd wants to take the easy road home. A true leader cannot be dependent on companionship for his or her security, but must learn to trust in God alone.

Leslie Ludy

I feel most real when alone, even most alive when alone. Better to say that the liveliness of companionship and the liveliness of solitude differ, and the latter is never as exhausting as the former.

Florida Scott-Maxwell

A Quote by Thomas Merton

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