Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“Some men turn away from all this cheap emotion with a kind of heroic despair…But this too can be an error. For… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless, than one that always verges on despair. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Place no hope in the feeling of assurance, in spiritual comfort. You may well have to get along without this. Place no… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
For perfect hope is achieved on the brink of despair, when instead of falling over the edge, we find ourselves walking on… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
I have learned that one cannot truly know hope unless he has found out how like despair hope is. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
To desire Him to be merciful to us is to acknowledge Him as God. To seek His pity when we deserve no… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
No matter how ruined man and his world may seem to be, and no matter how terrible man's despair may become, as… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Paradoxically, I have found peace because I have always been dissatisfied. My moments of depression and despair turn out to be renewals,… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life,… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
We know when we are following our vocation when our soul is set free from preoccupation with itself and is able to… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is, then to find God we must… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
It is almost impossible to overestimate the value of true humility and its power in the spiritual life. For the beginning of humility is… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
We are not perfectly free until we live in pure hope. For when our hope is pure, it no longer trusts exclusively in human… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The desire to kill is like the desire to attack another with an ingot of red -hot iron: I have to pick up the… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
To enter into the realm of contemplation one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance to a… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The mission of Christian humility in social life is not merely to edify, but to keep minds open to many alternatives. The rigidity of… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Things that are good are good, and if one is responding to that goodness one is in contact with a truth from which one… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“The wisdom of the flesh is a judgement that the ordinary ends of our natural appetites are the goods to which the whole of… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
