... but any fool knows that you don't need money to get enjoyment out of life. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Every moment and every event of every mans life on earth plants something in his soul. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
In our creation, God asked a question and in our truly living; God answers the question. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
You are certainly one of the joys of life for all who have ever come within a mile of you. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“The whole of life is to spiritualize our activities by humility and faith, to silence our nature by charity.” — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
In the spiritual life there is no such thing as an indifference to love or hate. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Our whole life is a meditation of our last decision - the only decision that matters. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
I myself am part of the weather and part of the climate and part of the place … It is certainly part… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
One of the strange laws of the contemplative life is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Ultimately faith is the only key to the universe. The final meaning of human existence, and the answers to the questions on… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
If you want to have a spiritual life you must unify your life. A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The only trouble is that in the spiritual life there are no tricks and no shortcuts. Those who imagine that they can… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The world as pure object is something that is not there. It is not a reality outside us for which we exist…It… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The world is a living and self-creating mystery of which I am myself a part, to which I am myself, my own… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Contemplation is life itself, fully awake, fully active, and fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Every moment and every event of everyman's life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“In all the situations of life the “will of God” comes to us not merely as an external dictate of impersonal law… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Living is not thinking. Thought is formed and guided by objective reality outside us. Living is the constant adjustment of thought to… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are travelling and in darkness.… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The question of love is one that cannot be evaded. Whether or not you claim to be interested in it from the… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The primordial blessing, 'increase and multiply', has suddenly become a hemorrhage of terror. We are numbered in billions, and massed together, marshalled,… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface of a man's life, to get behind the façade of… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The modern child may early in his or her existence have natural inclinations toward spirituality. The child may have imagination, originality, a… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries… — 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
Everything in modern city life is calculated to keep man from entering into himself and thinking about spiritual things. Even with the… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“In actual fact, conventions are the death of real tradition as they are of all real life. They are parasites which attach… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“When Life was Full In the age when life on earth was full, no one paid any special attention to worthy men,… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“There is a 'movement' of meditation, expressing the basic 'paschal' rhythm of the Christian life, the passage from death to life in… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of contemporary violence. To allow oneself to… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.” — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Every breath we draw is a gift of God's love; every moment of existence is a grace. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Life is not accomplishing some special work but attaining to a degree of consciousness and inner freedom which is beyond all works… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
It is true that we are called to create a better world. But we are first of all called to a more… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
My life is ... a mystery which I do not attempt to really understand, as though 1 were led by the hand… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Our real journey in life is interior; It is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the… — 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
“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
