A Quote by Thomas Merton

First, the desert is the country of madness. Second, it is the refuge of the devil, thrown out into the "wilderness of upper Egypt" to "wander in dry places." Thirst drives man mad, and the devil himself is mad with a kind of thirst for his own lost excellence--lost because he has immured himself in it and closed out everything else. So the man who wanders into the desert to be himself must take care that he does not go mad and become the servant of the one who dwells there in a sterile paradise of emptiness and rage.

Thomas Merton

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Because Become Care Closed Country Desert Devil Does Drives Dry Egypt Else Emptiness Everything Everything Else Excellence First Go He Man Himself His Kind Lost Mad Madness Man Must Out Own Paradise Places Rage Refuge Second Servant Sterile Take Take Care Thirst Thrown Upper Wander Wilderness

Quote Author

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

All writing is an antisocial act, since the writer is a man who can speak freely only when alone; to be himself he must lock himself up, to communicate he must cut himself off from all communication; and in this there is something always a little mad.

Kenneth Tynan

A man bitten by a dog, whether the animal is mad or not, is apt to get mad himself.

George D. Prentice

Man creates both his god and his devil in his own image. His god is himself at his best, and his devil himself at his worst.

Elbert Hubbard

I'm sure I've all but lost friends by maintaining that, despite their love for it, I always saw Stanley Kramer's 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World' as more of an exercise in anti-comedy than humor.

Dick Cavett

As Lucretius says: 'Thus ever from himself doth each man flee.' But what does he gain if he does not escape from himself? He ever follows himself and weighs upon himself as his own most burdensome companion. And so we ought to understand that what we struggle with is the fault, not of the places, but of ourselves

Seneca the Younger

A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and with the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby. The man is now a man.

Thomas Carlyle

When a man understands who he is, who God is, who the devil is... then he can pick himself up out of the gutter; he can clean himself up and stand up like a man should before his God.

Malcolm X

A man must sometimes laugh at himself or go mad,’ said he. ‘Few realize it. That is why there are so many madmen in the world.

Rafael Sabatini

He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.

Blaise Pascal

Man is a living lie--a bitter jest Upon himself--a conscious grain of sand Lost in a desert of unconsciousness.

Amos Bronson Alcott

A little righteous anger really brings out the best in the American personality. Our nation was born when 56 patriots got mad enough to sign the Declaration of Independence. We put a man on the moon because Sputnik made us mad at being number two in space. Getting mad in a constructive way is good for the soul- and the country.

Lee Iacocca

A man who has never lost himself in a cause bigger than himself has missed one of life's mountaintop experiences. Only in losing himself does he find himself. Only then does he discover all the latent strengths he never knew he had and which otherwise would have remained dormant.

Richard M. Nixon

Throughout the centuries, man has considered himself beautiful. I rather suppose that man only believes in his own beauty out of pride; that he is not really beautiful and he suspects this himself; for why does he look on the face of his fellow-man with such scorn?

Comte de Lautreamont

Man, full of emptiness and torn apart with homesickness for the desert has had to create from within himself an adventure, a torture-chamber, an unsafe and hazardous wilderness- this fool, this prisoner consumed with longing and despair, became the inventor of 'bad conscience'.

Friedrich Nietzsche

My basic political philosophy is, I ain't mad at that. Which basically means I don't have to have a strong opinion about everything. I'm too tired most of the time. Why do I have to take a stand on everything? Sometimes I'm just not mad at it. Like, What do you think about gay marriage? I ain't mad at you, you're gay and you're married: I ain't mad at you, go do it.

Larry Wilmore

A Quote by Thomas Merton

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