A Quote by Thomas Merton

The degradation of the sense of symbol in modern society is one of its many signs of spiritual decay.

Thomas Merton

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Decay Degradation Many Modern Modern Society Sense Signs Society Spiritual Symbol

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

Anthropologists have often described what happens to a primitive society when its spiritual values are exposed to the impact of modern civilisation. Its people lose the meaning of their lives, their social organisation disintegrates, and they themselves morally decay. We are now in the same condition. But we have never really understood what we have lost, for our spiritual leaders unfortunately were more interested in protecting their institutions than in understanding the mystery that symbols present.

Carl Jung

The signs that presage growth, so similar, it seems to me, to those in early adolescence: discontent, restlessness, doubt, despair, longing, are interpreted falsely as signs of decay. In youth one does not as often misinterpret the signs; one accepts them, quite rightly, as growing pains. One takes them seriously, listens to them, follows where they lead. ... But in the middle age, because of the false assumption that it is a period of decline, one interprets these life-signs, paradoxically, as signs of approaching death.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense really becomes uncommon.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

A theme that appears repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second half of the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that afflicts many people in modern society.

Theodore Kaczynski

I think many people have this sense that something about modern society - the screens, the noise, the traffic, the constant busyness - has approached a point where living in the world feels somewhat unhealthy.

Michael Finkel

The journey of the hero is about the courage to seek the depths; the image of creative rebirth; the eternal cycle of change within us; the uncanny discovery that the seeker is the mystery which the seeker seeks to know. The hero journey is a symbol that binds, in the original sense of the word, two distant ideas, the spiritual quest of the ancients with the modern search for identity, “always the one, shape-shifting yet marvelously constant story that we find.

Phil Cousineau

The 'gallows' are not only a symbol of death, but also a symbol of cruelty, terror and irreverence for life; the common denominator of primitive savagery, medieval fanaticism and modern totalitarianism.

Arthur Koestler

No matter what you think of him otherwise, there are no two ways about it - Narayana Murthy is inextricably linked to the modern Indian's sense of self. So also is Sachin Tendulkar. Every time he goes out to bat, he carries with him the dreams of a billion people. Like many sporting legends, he is an iconic symbol of our subliminal nationalism.

Barkha Dutt

The society of merchants can be defined as a society in which things disappear in favor of signs. When a ruling class measures its fortunes, not by the acre of land or the ingot of gold, but by the number of figures corresponding ideally to a certain number of exchange operations, it thereby condemns itself to setting a certain kind of humbug at the center of its experience and its universe. A society founded on signs is, in its essence, an artificial society in which man's carnal truth is handled as something artificial.

Albert Camus

We [Christians] have the dilemma of using a symbol system that was not made for our worldview, to give our worldview... I think the thing we're waiting for is a genius to come forth who can either make a new symbol system which is still modern, or more properly, as symbol systems don't come overnight, a group of people to modify the symbol systems of our day, so that we can use them for our Christian message without a disadvantage.

Francis Schaeffer

There is no question that Francis was in advance of his age, as he anticipated all that is liberal and sympathetic in modern times: the love of nature, the love of animals, the sense of social compassion, the sense of the spiritual dangers of affluence.

Henryk Skolimowski

Absorption in ease is one of the most reliable signs of present or impending decay.

Richard M. Weaver

One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is the intermixing of different genres.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The decay of society is praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.

Samuel Johnson

A Quote by Thomas Merton

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