What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we cannot cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of self-discovery and understanding oneself before pursuing grand ambitions.
Thomas Merton's quote highlights the idea that personal introspection and self-awareness are crucial before one can embark on significant external ventures, such as exploring the moon. The 'abyss' symbolizes the internal struggles and emotional barriers that individuals must confront to achieve true growth and fulfillment, emphasizing that immense outward achievements are meaningless without inner clarity and connection.
In practice
During a motivational speech about personal development.
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
The concept of conservation is a far truer sign of civilization than that spoilation of a continent which we once confused with progress.
Man is insatiable for power; he is infantile in his desires and, always discontented with what he has, loves only what he has not. People complain of the despotism of princes; they ought to complain of the despotism of man.
And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafΓ© in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
Never judge a philosophy by its abuse.
He was the average mortal. It troubled him to get used to the world one way and then suddenly have it turn different.
We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus!
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