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
Every moment and every event of every mans life on earth plants something in his soul. — 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
There are days when I am convinced that Heaven starts already, now, in this ordinary life just as it is, in all… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The danger of education, I have found, is that it so easily confuses means with ends. Worse than that, it quite easily… — 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
Love in fact is the spiritual life, and without it all the other exercises of the spirit, however lofty, are emptied of… — 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
Let me rest in Your will and be silent. Then the light of Your joy will warm my life. Its fire will… — 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
When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Once you have grace," I said to him, "you are free. Without it, you cannot help doing the things you know you… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“Life is not attained by reasoning and analysis but first of all by living.” — 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
To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence,… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“What every man looks for in life is his own salvation and the salvation of the men he lives with. By salvation… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
...love triumphs, at least in this life, not by eliminating evil once for all, but by resisting and overcoming it anew every… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
We cannot possess the truth fully until it has entered into the very substance of our life by good habits, and by… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Contemplative living is living in true relationship with oneself, God, others and nature, free of the illusions of separateness. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
In general, it can be said that no contemplative life is possible without ascetic self-discipline. One must learn to survive without the… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
One of the most important-and most neglected-elements in the beginning of the interior life is the ability to respond to reality, to… — 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
“There is something in the depths of our being that hungers for wholeness and finality. Because we are made for eternal life,… — 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
