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
Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony. — 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
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
I shall lead you through the loneliness, the solitude you will not understand; but it is my shortcut to your soul. — 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
To love blindly is to love selfishly, because the goal of such love is not the real advantage of the beloved but… — 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
There is not true intimacy between souls who do not know how to respect one another's solitude. — 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
Be good, keep your feet dry, your eyes open, your heart at peace and your soul in the joy of Christ. — 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
Contradictions have always existed in the soul of [individuals]. But it is only when we prefer analysis to silence that they become… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Grace is not a strange, magic substance which is subtly filtered into our souls to act as a kind of spiritual penicillin.… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The psychological impotence of our enraged generation must be traced to the overwhelming accusation of insincerity which every man and woman has… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Art is not an end in itself. It introduces the soul into a higher spiritual order, which it expresses and in some… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
You pray best when the mirror of your soul is empty of every image except the Image of the Invisible Father. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence, the peace of solitude, which is necessary, to some extent, for the… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The married man and the mother of a Christian family, if they are faithful to their obligations, will fulfill a mission that… — 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
God has left sin in the world in order that there may be forgiveness: not only the secret forgiveness by which He… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
We know when we are following our vocation when our soul is set free from preoccupation with itself and is able to… — 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
And it is in this darkness, when there is nothing left in us that can please or comfort our own minds, when… — 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
“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
![“Contradictions have always existed in the soul of [individuals]. But it is only when we prefer analysis to silence that they become a constant and insoluble problem. We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them and see them in the light of exterior and…” quote by Thomas Merton](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/ee9/thomas-merton-231_analysis_contradictions-have-always-existed-in-th_1336538.jpg)
