... but any fool knows that you don't need money to get enjoyment out of life. — 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 spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything He has given us...and He has given us everything. Every… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
What is 'grace'? It is God's own life, shared by us. God's life is love. Deus caritas est. By grace we are… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life,… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
If our life is poured out in useless words, we will never hear anything, never become anything, and in the end, because… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“If I penetrate to the depths of my existence, the indefinable, am, that is myself in its deepest roots, then through this… — 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
Paradoxically, I have found peace because I have always been dissatisfied. My moments of depression and despair turn out to be renewals,… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Faith is the door to the full inner life of the Church, a life which includes not only access to an authoritative… — 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
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 function of the life of prayer is, then, to enlighten and strengthen our conscience so that it not only knows… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Love, in fact, is the spiritual life; and without it, all other exercises of the spirit are emptied of content. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“Ask me not where I live or what I like to eat . . . Ask me what I am living for… — 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
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
“Justify my soul, O God, but also from Your fountains fill my will with fire. Shine in my mind, although perhaps this… — 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
