Persons are not known by intellect alone, not by principles alone, but only by love. It is when we love the other,… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Our God...is a consuming fire. And if we, by love, become transformed into Him and burn as He burns, His fire will… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who He… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
God must be allowed the right to speak unpredictably.... We must find him in our enemy, or we may lose him even… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
When I pray for peace, I pray not only that the enemies of my own country may cease to want war, but… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Merely to resist evil with evil by hating those who hate us and seeking to destroy them, is actually no resistance at… — 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
