“Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep,… — 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… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
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
“There are many other escapes from the empirical, external self, which might seem to be, but are not, contemplation. For instance, the… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God: for it is perhaps your own coldness… — 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
“and burdens of mature life, when they became aware of their own weakness, they lost their peace, they let go of their… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Consequently, the truth of God lives in our souls more by the power of superior moral courage than by the light of… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“Prayer does not blind us to the world, but it transforms our vision of the world, and makes us see it, all… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“Whether you teach or live in the cloister or nurse the sick, whether you are in religion or out of it, married… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial "doubt." This doubt is by no means opposed to… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“Leaving Things Alone (excerpt) You train your eye and your vision lusts after colour. You train your ear, and you long for… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Place no hope in the feeling of assurance, in spiritual comfort. You may well have to get along without this. Place no… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface of a man's life, to get behind the façade of… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Meditation is one of the ways in which the spiritual man keeps himself awake. — 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
Technology is not in itself opposed to spirituality and to religion. But it presents a great temptation. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Love in fact is the spiritual life, and without it all the other exercises of the spirit, however lofty, are emptied of… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
If there is no silence beyond and within the many words of doctrine, there is no religion, only a religious ideology. For… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“There is something in the depths of our being that hungers for wholeness and finality. Because we are made for eternal life,… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Everything in modern city life is calculated to keep man from entering into himself and thinking about spiritual things. Even with the… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“In other words, I have tried to learn in my writing a monastic lesson I could probably not have learned otherwise: to… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“God bridges the infinite distances between Himself and the spirits created to love Him, by supernatural missions of His own life. The… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
If you want to have a spiritual life you must unify your life. A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual… — 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
