“Prayer does not blind us to the world, but it transforms our vision of the world, and makes us see it, all… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“Leaving Things Alone (excerpt) You train your eye and your vision lusts after colour. You train your ear, and you long for… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“I could recognize that those who thought about God had a good way of considering Him, and that those who believed in… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“All one night we sat, with a friend of his, in a big dark roadhouse outside of Philadelphia, arguing and arguing about… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The man who lives in division is living in death. He cannot find himself because he is lost; he has ceased to… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
To be ordinary is not a choice: It is the usual freedom of men without visions. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that… — 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
