“If we are to love sincerely, and with simplicity, we must first of all overcome the fear of not being loved. And… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
This act of total surrender is not merely a fantastic intellectual and mystical gamble; it is something much more serious. It is… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Jesus lived and died in vain if He did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal law… — 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
Love not only prefers the good of another to my own, but it does not even compare the two. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“If these seeds would take root in my liberty, and if His will would grow from my freedom, I would become the… — 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
The gift of love is the gift of the power and capacity to love, and therefore, to give love with full effect… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
We are obliged to love one another. We are not strictly bound to "like" one another. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
But the man who is not afraid to admit everything that he sees to be wrong with himself, and yet recognizes that… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Our God...is a consuming fire. And if we, by love, become transformed into Him and burn as He burns, His fire will… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“We have been fashioned, in all our perfection, each according to his own nature, and all our natures ordered and harmonized together,… — 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 society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Do not be one of those who, rather than risk failure, never attempts anything. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Each particular being, in its individuality, its concrete nature and entity, with all its own characteristics and its private qualities and its… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Love is free; it does not depend on the desirability of its object, but loves for love's sake. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
If there is no silence beyond and within the many words of doctrine, there is no religion, only a religious ideology. For… — 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
“For whatever is demanded by truth, by justice, by mercy, or by love must surely be taken to be willed by God.… — 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
