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
“Contemplation means rest, suspension of activity, withdrawal into the mysterious interior solitude in which the soul is absorbed in the immense and… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“I have my own way to walk and for some reason or other Zen is right in the middle of it wherever… — 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
“Whether you teach or live in the cloister or nurse the sick, whether you are in religion or out of it, married… — 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
Technology is not in itself opposed to spirituality and to religion. But it presents a great temptation. — 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
“Do not look for rest in any pleasure, because you were not created for pleasure: you were created for spiritual joy. And… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The importance of detachment from things, the importance of poverty, is that we are supposed to be free from things that we… — 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
By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to… — 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
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
God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of him. A word will never be able to comprehend the voice… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
There is a subtle but inescapable connection between the "sacred" attitude and the acceptance of one's in most self. — 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
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
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 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
The sacred attitude is, then, one of deep and fundamental respect for the real in whatever new form it may present itself. — 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
