It is almost impossible to overestimate the value of true humility and its power in the spiritual life. For the beginning of… — 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
We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are travelling and in darkness.… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
You will never be able to have perfect interior peace and recollection unless you are detached even from the desire of peace… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
To become attached to the experience of peace is to threaten the true and essential and vital union of our soul with… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The Lord did not create suffering. Pain and death came into the world with the fall of man. But after man had… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
A humble man is not afraid of failure. In fact, he is not afraid of anything, even himself, since perfect humility implies… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
a man can radically change his life and attain to a deeper meaning, a more perfect integration, a more complete fulfillment, a… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The Holy Spirit is the most perfect gift of the Father to men, and yet He is the one gift which the… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
For perfect hope is achieved on the brink of despair, when instead of falling over the edge, we find ourselves walking on… — 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
The whole function of the life of prayer is, then, to enlighten and strengthen our conscience so that it not only knows… — 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
