All men who live only according to their five senses, and seek nothing beyond the gratification of their natural appetites for pleasure… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
For now, oh my God, it is to You alone that I can talk, because nobody else will understand. I cannot bring… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness. This mysterious unity and… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Persons are not known by intellect alone, not by principles alone, but only by love. It is when we love the other,… — 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
“When Life was Full In the age when life on earth was full, no one paid any special attention to worthy men,… — 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
“Those who love their own noise are impatient of everything else. They constantly defile the silence of the forests and the mountains… — thomas merton Copy Share Image
“We have been fashioned, in all our perfection, each according to his own nature, and all our natures ordered and harmonized together,… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“There is in every intellect a natural exigency for a true concept of God: we are born with the thirst to know… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Each particular being, in its individuality, its concrete nature and entity, with all its own characteristics and its private qualities and its… — 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
Contemplative living is living in true relationship with oneself, God, others and nature, free of the illusions of separateness. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
A Christian is committed to the belief that Love and Mercy are the most powerful forces on earth. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
For the ones who are called saints by human opinion on earth may very well be devils, and their light may very… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“Leaving Things Alone (excerpt) The wise man, then, when he must govern, knows how to do nothing. Letting things alone, he rests… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Creation was given to people as a clean window through which the light of God could shine into people's souls. Sun and… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
First, the desert is the country of madness. Second, it is the refuge of the devil, thrown out into the "wilderness of… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“The whole of life is to spiritualize our activities by humility and faith, to silence our nature by charity.” — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“The Desert Fathers believed that the wilderness had been created supremely valuable in the eyes of God precisely because it had no… — 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
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
The soul of man, left to its own natural level, is a potentially lucid crystal left in darkness. It is perfect in… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
One has to be alone, under the sky, Before everything falls into place and one finds his or her own place in… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The modern child may early in his or her existence have natural inclinations toward spirituality. The child may have imagination, originality, a… — 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
