“Perfect Joy (excerpts) Is there to be found on earth a fullness of joy, or is there no such thing? . .… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“Therefore there is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering… — 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
There is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace, my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Not only does silence give us a chance to understand ourselves better, to get a truer and more balanced perspective on our… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“In other words, I have tried to learn in my writing a monastic lesson I could probably not have learned otherwise: to… — 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 chief care should not be to find pleasure or success, health or life or money or rest or even things like… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
But it certainly is a wonderful thing to wake up suddenly in the solitude of the woods and look up at the… — 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 Christian life, and especially the contemplative life, is a continual discovery of Christ in new and unexpected places. — 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
“Ultimately the only way that I can be myself is to become identified with Him in Whom is hidden the reason and… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
True encounter with Christ liberates something in us, a power we did not know we had, a hope, a capacity for life,… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“Nothing could be more alien to contemplation than the cogito ergo sum of Descartes. “I think, therefore I am.” This is the… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“The Active Life If an expert does not have some problem to vex him, he is unhappy! If a philosopher's teaching is… — 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
a man can radically change his life and attain to a deeper meaning, a more perfect integration, a more complete fulfillment, a… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Life consists in learning to live on one's own, spontaneous, freewheeling: to do this one must recognize what is one's own-be familiar… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“One who is content with what he has, and who accepts the fact that he inevitably misses very much in life, is… — 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
By my monastic life and vows I am saying no to all the concentration camps, the aerial bombardments, the staged political trials,… — 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
