May God prevent us from becoming "right-thinking men"-that is to say men who agree perfectly with their own police. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder. — Thomas Merton Awakening Copy Share Image
Each individual Christian and each new age of the Church has to make this rediscovery, this return to the source of Christian… — Thomas Merton Age Copy Share Image
Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false Self. We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet. — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be… — Thomas Merton Destiny Copy Share Image
What is the use of praying if at the very moment of prayer, we have so little confidence in God that we… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
I have only one desire, and that is the desire for solitude-to disappear into God, to be submerged in His peace, to… — Thomas Merton Desire Copy Share Image
“We must learn to realize that the love of God seeks us in every situation, and seeks our good. His inscrutable love… — Thomas Merton Awakening Copy Share Image
Contemplation is not and cannot be a function of this external self. There is an irreducible opposition between the deep transcendent self… — Thomas Merton Contemplation 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 Grace Copy Share Image
The whole world has risen in Christ... If God is 'all in all,' then everything is in fact paradise, because it is… — Thomas Merton Christ Copy Share Image
The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit out own… — Thomas Merton Beginning 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
a man can radically change his life and attain to a deeper meaning, a more perfect integration, a more complete fulfillment, a… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
I came with the notion of perhaps saying something for monks and to monks of all religions because I am supposed to… — Thomas Merton Brother Copy Share Image
Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves.… — Thomas Merton Artist Copy Share Image
Our thought should not merely be an answer to what someone else has just said. Or what someone else might have said.… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
I would call the attention of the reader to the difference between "reason" and "reasoning." Reason is a light, reasoning a process.… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“He arrives at his own being as if it were an objective reality, that is to say he strives to become aware… — 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… — Thomas Merton Darkness Copy Share Image
“We are what we love. If we love God, in whose image we were created, we discover ourselves in him and we… — Thomas Merton Being human Copy Share Image
“Action and Non-Action The non-action of the wise man is not inaction. It is not studied. It is not shaken by anything.… — Thomas Merton Peace Copy Share Image
“My chief care should not be to find pleasure or success, health or life or money or rest or even things like… — Thomas Merton Death Copy Share Image
We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. God manifests Himself… — Thomas Merton Awe Copy Share Image
We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the… — Thomas Merton Desire Copy Share Image
This act of total surrender is not merely a fantastic intellectual and mystical gamble; it is something much more serious. It is… — Thomas Merton Acts of love Copy Share Image
They were in the world and not of it--not because they were saints, but in a different way: because they were artists.… — Thomas Merton Art Copy Share Image
Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“I had learned from my own father that it was almost blasphemy to regard the function of art as merely to reproduce… — Thomas Merton Adventure Copy Share Image
If there is no silence beyond and within the many words of doctrine, there is no religion, only a religious ideology. For… — Thomas Merton Action Copy Share Image
It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as Gods will when you yourself have warm clothes and… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
True encounter with Christ liberates something in us, a power we did not know we had, a hope, a capacity for life,… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
“For language to have meaning there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He… — Thomas Merton Language Copy Share Image
Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Cupidity...takes created things for ends in themselves, which they are not. The will that seeks rest in creatures for their own sake… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
His justice is the love that gives to each one of His creatures the gifts that His mercy has previously decreed. And… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
When your tongue is silent, you can rest in the silence of the forest. When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks… — Thomas Merton Forests Copy Share Image
“The eyes of the saint make all beauty holy and the hands of the saint consecrate everything they touch to the glory… — Thomas Merton Beauty Copy Share Image
Love is...like a spring coming up out of the ground of our own depths. "I am gift." All that I am is… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
