A purely mental life may be destructive if it leads us to substitute thought for life and ideas for actions. The activity… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
You must realize that it is the ordinary way of God's dealings with us that our ideas do not work out speedily… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Thinking about monastic ideals is not the same as living up to them, but at any rate such thinking has an important… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Our Christian destiny is, in fact, a great one: but we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the other.... The whole purpose of life is to live… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me...you will lead… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Keeping a journal has taught me that there is not so much new in your life as you sometimes think. When you… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
People have no idea what one saint can do: for sanctity is stronger than the whole of hell. — 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
![“A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying [God]. It “consents,” so to speak, to [God's] creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree” quote by Thomas Merton](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/d5f/thomas-merton-231_consent_a-tree-gives-glory-to-god-by-being-a-tre_2294763.jpg)
