After all, what is your personal identity? It is what you really are, your real self. None of us is what he… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
For language to have meaning, there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being. Between the silence of… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“Means and Ends The purpose of a fish trap Is to catch fish, And when the fish are caught The trap is… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. it is beyond words, and it is beyond… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The logic of the poet - that is, the logic of language or the experience itself - develops the way a living… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“For language to have meaning there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He… — 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
