To hope is to risk frustration. Make up your mind to risk frustration. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit. — 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
How can I be sincere if I am constantly changing my mind to conform with the shadow of what I think others… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
One of the first things to learn if you want to be a contemplative is to mind your own business. Nothing is… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Faith is a light of such supreme brilliance that it dazzles the mind and darkens all its visions of other realities, but… — 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… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Every moment and every event of everyman's life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
In meditative prayer, one thinks and speaks not only with the mind and lips, but in a certain sense with one's whole… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
If a writer is so cautious that he never writes anything that cannot be criticized, he will never be able to write… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
A purely mental life may be destructive if it leads us to substitute thought for life and ideas for actions. The activity… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
You have got me walking up and down all day under those trees, saying to me over and over again, "Solitude, solitude."… — 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… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by illusion, a point of pure truth, a… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
I had refused to pay any attention to the moral laws upon which all our vitality and sanity depend: and so now… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
When your tongue is silent, you can rest in the silence of the forest. When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves.… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
... Nothing resembles reality less than the photograph. Nothing resembles substance less than its shadow. To convey the meaning of something substantial… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
I would call the attention of the reader to the difference between "reason" and "reasoning." Reason is a light, reasoning a process.… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Are they moved by a sense of human need for silence, for reflection, for inner seeking? So they want to get away… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
And it is in this darkness, when there is nothing left in us that can please or comfort our own minds, when… — 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
“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
I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not… — Thomas Merton Copy Share
If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy. If you write for men--you may make some money and… — Thomas Merton Copy Share
“Contemplation means rest, suspension of activity, withdrawal into the mysterious interior solitude in which the soul is absorbed in the immense and fruitful silence… — Thomas Merton Copy Share
