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
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
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
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
The only trouble is that in the spiritual life there are no tricks and no shortcuts. Those who imagine that they can… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in… — 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
In the spiritual life there is no such thing as an indifference to love or hate. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
O God, teach me to be satisfied with my own helplessness in the spiritual life. Teach me to be content with Your… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Love, in fact, is the spiritual life; and without it, all other exercises of the spirit are emptied of content. — 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
