The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by someone capable of believing that… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
One might say I have decided to marry the silence of the forest. The sweet dark warmth of the whole world will… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
I am beginning to realize that "sanity" is no longer a value or an end in itself. The "sanity" of modern man… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
I am beginning to realize that "sanity" is no longer a value or an end in itself. If modern people were a… — 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
I am willing to admit that some people might live there for years, or even a lifetime, so protected that they never… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The thing about Zen is that it pushes contradictions to their ultimate limit where one has to choose between madness and innocence.… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Silence has many dimensions. It can be a regression and an escape, a loss of self, or it can be presence, awareness,… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
There are crimes which no one would commit as an individual which he willingly and bravely commits when acting in the name… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Our thought should not merely be an answer to what someone else has just said. Or what someone else might have said.… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means… — 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
