A Christian is committed to the belief that Love and Mercy are the most powerful forces on earth. — 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
Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Do not be one of those who, rather than risk failure, never attempts anything. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“The love of pleasure is destined by its very nature to defeat itself and end in frustration.” — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
To Serve the God of Love one must be free, one must face the terrible responsibility of the decision to love in… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
O love-why can't you leave me alone? Which is a rhetorical question meaning: for heaven's sake, don't. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
But precisely this illusion that everything is "clear" is what is blinding us all. It is a serious temptation, and it is… — 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
Our happiness consists in sharing the happiness of God, the perfection of His unlimited freedom, the perfection of His love. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
We must be true inside, true to ourselves, before we can know a truth that is outside us. But we make ourselves… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
We do not exist for ourselves alone, and it is only when we are fully convinced of this fact that we begin… — 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
To be risen with Christ means not only that one has a choice and that one may live by a higher law… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“In all the situations of life the “will of God” comes to us not merely as an external dictate of impersonal law… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Love is...like a spring coming up out of the ground of our own depths. "I am gift." All that I am is… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The married man and the mother of a Christian family, if they are faithful to their obligations, will fulfill a mission that… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“God bridges the infinite distances between Himself and the spirits created to love Him, by supernatural missions of His own life. The… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
His justice is the love that gives to each one of His creatures the gifts that His mercy has previously decreed. And… — 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
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
The reality that is present to us and in us: call it being...Silence. And the simple fact that by being attentive, by… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“For at sixteen I had imagined that Blake, like the other romantics, was glorifying passion, natural energy, for their own sake. Far… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“But give me the strength that waits upon You in silence and peace. Give me humility in which alone is rest, and… — 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. And… — 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
If we wait for some people to become agreeable or attractive before we begin to love them, we will never begin. If… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
To find love I must enter into the sanctuary where it is hidden, which is the mystery of God. — 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
Contemplation is the loving sense of this life, this presence and this eternity. — 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
If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Duty does not have to be dull. Love can make it beautiful and fill it with life. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
I am earth, earth My heart's love Bursts with hay and flowers. I am a lake of blue air In which my… — 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
