If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.
Interpretation
Studying the darker aspects of humanity can reveal much about society and its struggles.
Thomas Merton suggests that understanding the negative facets of human existence, such as conflict and suffering, is essential for grasping the complexities of social and political history. By examining these 'hellish' conditions, one can gain deeper insights into the motivations, behaviors, and structures that shape modern nations.
In practice
In a lecture about modern history, one might say, 'As Thomas Merton once stated, 'If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.' This encourages us to examine the dark moments that have shaped our world.
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 fellow's got a bee in his bonnet. Thinks God's a secretion of the liver--all right once in a way, but there's no need to keep on about it. There's nothing you can't prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited.
Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.
We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all.
The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.
The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.
If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.
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