One opens the inner doors of one's heart to the infinite silences of the Spirit, out of whose abysses love wells up… — 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
Grains of error planted innocently in a well-kept greenhouse can become giant poisonous trees. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
For the ones who are called saints by human opinion on earth may very well be devils, and their light may very… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Very well, then: why are you attached to any one book, or to the words and ways of one saint when he… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
God, Who is everywhere, never leaves us. Yet He seems sometimes to be present, sometimes to be absent. If we do not… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. You take your time,… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success, and they are in such a hurry to get it that… — 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
