“If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh and the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life.”

— Thomas Merton , book The Seven Storey Mountain

That is to say, all men who live only according to their five senses, and seek nothing beyond the gratification of their natural appetites for pleasure and reputation and power, cut themselves off from that charity which is the principle of all spiritual vitality and happiness because it alone saves us from the barren wilderness of our own abominable selfishness.

p. 147
The Seven Storey Mountain (1948)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the concupiscence o…" by Thomas Merton?

Thomas Merton 92

Priest and author 1915–1968

Frederic Harton (1889–1958) English Theologian

The Elements of the Spiritual Life: A Study in Ascetical Theology (1960), p. 104

“…the whole world here breathed easy concupiscence…”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Enemy in the Blanket (1958)

“For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.”

John the Evangelist (10–98) author of the Gospel of John; traditionally identified with John the Apostle of Jesus, John of Patmos (author o…

1 John 2:16 NIV
First Letter of John

“If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, it's not of the Father, it's of the world. The world passeth away. It's all going to be gone. It's all going to burn. Do you know how much Howard Hughes left behind when he died? All of it, every penny. You're going to do the very same thing. Don't invest your life in things that are going to burn. The last thing we need to do, almost last thing, listen for the trumpet.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The dangers of evolution

“Don’t get testy with me, sir. I am Augustine of Hippo Regius, discoverer of concupiscence. Between my legs hangs the axis on which will turn the brave new world of Christian antieroticism.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 7 (p. 171)

“Under a forehead roughly comparable to that of the Javanese or the Piltdown man are visible a pair of tiny pig eyes, lit up alternately by greed and concupiscence. His nose, broken in childhood by a self-inflicted blow with a hockey stick, has a prehensile tip, ever quick to smell out an insult; at the least suspicion of an affront, Perelman, who has the pride of a Spanish grandee, has been known to whip out his sword-cane and hide in the nearest closet.”

S.J. Perelman (1904–1979) American humorist, author, and screenwriter

The Best of S. J. Perelman, Introduction (1947)
The Introduction was written under the name "Sidney Namlerep".

““Scripture and the Fathers recognize only two principles of all human actions,” says Bishop Colbert, “charity, the principle of all good actions; cupidity, the principle of all bad ones. The Jesuits, on the contrary, introduce a host of principles of human actions.” There would thus be actions which were neither good nor evil, “an innumerable multitude of indifferent actions, of no consequence either for good or for ill.”… Thus man would have constituted for himself a sphere where there was no longer any question between himself and God either of sin or of virtue…. God, at the last judgment, would not ask him to account for actions which were unrelated to his salvation and which did not concern the divinity. In that area, the Christian would enjoy a legitimate freedom, without fear of constantly sinning; he would be a sinner only when the occasion of sin arose, in specific cases. The rest of the time he would live between heaven and hell, between charity and concupiscence.”

Bernard Groethuysen (1880–1946) French literary historian, translator and writer

Source: The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), pp. 119-120

“The nurse of infidelity is sensuality. Youth are sensual. The Bible stands in their way. It prohibits the indulgence of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life.”

Richard Cecil (clergyman) (1748–1810) British Evangelical Anglican priest and social reformer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 348.

“Kennaston no longer thought of himself as a man of flesh-and-blood moving about a world of his compeers. Or, at least, that especial aspect of his existence was to him no longer a phase of any particular importance.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

"Richard Fentnor Harroby" in Ch. 1 : Pallation of the Gambit
The Cream of the Jest (1917)

“My uncle jumped up from the desk, loving him more than he loved any other man in the world, and through him loving the lost nation, the multitude dead, and the multitude living in every alien corner of the world.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Inhale and Exhale (1936), Antranik and the Spirit of Armenia

“If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh and the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Thomas Merton 92

Related quotes

Related topics