True contemplation is not a psychological trick but a theological grace. It can come to us ONLY as a gift, and not… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Saints are what they are not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it… — 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
The monk in hiding himself from the world becomes not less than himself, not less of a person, but more of a… — 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
This is the greatest stumbling block in our spiritual discipline, which, in actuality, consists not in getting rid of the self 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
Detachment from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between 'things' and 'God' as if God were another thing and as… — 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
I believe we are going to have to prepare ourselves for the difficult and patient task of outgrowing rigid and intransigent nationalism,… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Contemplation in the age of Auschwitz and Dachau, Solovky and Karaganda is something darker and more fearsome than contemplation in the age… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
But it certainly is a wonderful thing to wake up suddenly in the solitude of the woods and look up at the… — 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
At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by illusion, a point of pure truth, a… — 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
