The lights of prayer that make us imagine we are beginning to be angels are sometimes only signs that we are finally… — 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
Good moral actions are not enough. Everything in us, from the very depths, must be cleansed and reordered... — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
What does it mean to know and experience my own “nothingness?” It is not enough to turn away in disgust from my… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Not all of us are called to be hermits, but all of us need enough silence and solitude in our lives to… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The psychological impotence of our enraged generation must be traced to the overwhelming accusation of insincerity which every man and woman has… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as Gods will when you yourself have warm clothes and… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
O God, teach me to be satisfied with my own helplessness in the spiritual life. Teach me to be content with Your… — 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
