In any case, his religious teaching consisted mostly in more or less vague ethical remarks, an obscure mixture of ideals of English… — 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
To be risen with Christ means not only that one has a choice and that one may live by a higher law… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Curiously, the most serious religious people, or the most concerned scholars, those who constantly read the Bible as a matter of professional… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Zen is consciousness unstructured by particular form or particular system, a trans-cultural, trans-religious, transformed consciousness. — 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
The real hope is not in something we think we can do, but in God, who is making something good out of… — 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
