Quotes about Heart
My friends, I wish with all my heart that you do not make the same mistake. The next time you are suffering, if this suffering was caused by the person you love most in the world, have recourse to right action and say the fourth mantra: "Dear one, I am suffering deeply. I need you to help me to get out of this suffering. I need you to explain this to me." This is the language of true love.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
He who permits himself to tell a lie once finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, 'til at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.
— Thomas Jefferson
Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone.
— Thomas Merton
It is not merely our own desire but the desire of Christ in His Spirit that drives us to grow in love. Those who seldom or never feel in their hearts the desire for the love of God and other men, and who do not thirst for the pure waters of desire which are poured out in us by the strong, living God, are usually those who have drunk from other rivers or have dug for themselves broken cisterns.
— Thomas Merton
By "prayer of the heart" we seek God himself present in the depths of our being and meet him there by invoking the name of Jesus in faith, wonder and love.
— Thomas Merton
If we do not respond to human affection we cannot be loved by God in the way in which He has willed to love us—with the Heart of the Man, Jesus Who is God, the Son of God, and the anointed Christ.
— Thomas Merton
Even the desire of contemplation can be impure, when we forget that true contemplation means the complete destruction of all selfishness—the most pure poverty and cleanness of heart.
— Thomas Merton
The truth I must love in my brother is God Himself, living in him. I must seek the life of the Spirit of God breathing in him. And I can only discern and follow that mysterious life by the action of the same Holy Spirit living and acting in the depths of my own heart.
— Thomas Merton
For the monk searches not only his own heart: he plunges deep into the heart of that world of which he remains a part although he seems to have left it. In reality the monk abandons the world only in order to listen more intently to the deepest and most neglected voices that proceed from its inner depth.
— Thomas Merton
Meditation for them consisted in making the words of the Bible their own by memorizing them and repeating them, with deep and simple concentration, "from the heart." Therefore the "heart" comes to play a central role in this primitive form of monastic prayer.
— Thomas Merton
I will give them a heart to understand that I am Yahweh, and they shall be my people and I will be their God when they return to me with all their heart. —JEREMIAH 24:7
— Thomas Merton
The contemplative is not isolated in himself, but liberated from his external and egotistic self by humility and purity of heart—therefore there is no longer any serious obstacle to simple and humble love of other men.
— Thomas Merton