“I have my own way to walk and for some reason or other Zen is right in the middle of it wherever… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with… — 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
Our minds are like crows. They pick up everything that glitters, no matter how uncomfortable our nests get with all that metal… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Day after day I read Freud, thinking myself to be very enlightened and scientific when, as a matter of fact, I was… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
We too often forget that faith is a matter of questioning and struggle before it becomes one of certitude and peace. You… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The importance of detachment from things, the importance of poverty, is that we are supposed to be free from things that we… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Our whole life is a meditation of our last decision - the only decision that matters. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Curiously, the most serious religious people, or the most concerned scholars, those who constantly read the Bible as a matter of professional… — 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
We are obliged to love one another. We are not strictly bound to 'like' one another. Love governs the will: 'liking' 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
In the natural order no matter what ideals may be theoretically possible, most people more or less live for themselves and for… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
No matter how ruined man and his world may seem to be, and no matter how terrible man's despair may become, as… — 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
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
“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
