The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves. — 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
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
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
Love is not a matter of getting what you want. Quite the contrary. The insistence on always having what you want, on… — 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
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 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
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
The desire to kill is like the desire to attack another with an ingot of red -hot iron: I have to pick… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The desire to kill is like the desire to attack another with a red hot iron. I have to pick up the… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The question of love is one that cannot be evaded. Whether or not you claim to be interested in it from the… — 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
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
“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
