“Contemplation means rest, suspension of activity, withdrawal into the mysterious interior solitude in which the soul is absorbed in the immense and… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“For it is God’s love that warms me in the sun and God’s love that sends the cold rain. It is God’s… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves and not to twist them to fit our own… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Persons are not known by intellect alone, not by principles alone, but only by love. It is when we love the other,… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Love is not a mere emotion or sentiment. It is the lucid and ardent responses of the whole person to a value… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“We are what we love. If we love God, in whose image we were created, we discover ourselves in him and we… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Those who think they 'know' from the beginning will never in fact come to know anything. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
As long as we are on earth, the love that unites us will bring us suffering by our very contact with one… — 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
“Prayer does not blind us to the world, but it transforms our vision of the world, and makes us see it, all… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“Whether you teach or live in the cloister or nurse the sick, whether you are in religion or out of it, married… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and,… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
To love our nothingness we must love everything in us that the proud man loves when he loves himself. But we must… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“Leaving Things Alone (excerpt) You train your eye and your vision lusts after colour. You train your ear, and you long for… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
If we are to love sincerely, and with simplicity, we must first of all overcome the fear of not being loved. — 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… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
For if I am to love truly and freely, I must be able to give something that is truly my own to… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
To love blindly is to love selfishly, because the goal of such love is not the real advantage of the beloved but… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Business is not the supreme virtue, and sanctity is not measured by the amount of work we accomplish. Perfection is found in… — 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
