If it so happened that I had once written a best-seller, this was a pure accident, due to inattention and naivete, and… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“I seek to speak to you, in some way, as your own self. Who can tell what this may mean? I myself… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Once you have grace," I said to him, "you are free. Without it, you cannot help doing the things you know you… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
In general, it can be said that no contemplative life is possible without ascetic self-discipline. One must learn to survive without the… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Nothing has ever been said about God that hasn't already been said better by the wind in the pine trees. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
No writing on the solitary, meditative dimensions of life can say anything that has not already been said better by the wind… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Our thought should not merely be an answer to what someone else has just said. Or what someone else might have said.… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
If our life is poured out in useless words, we will never hear anything, never become anything, and in the end, because… — 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
