Thomas Merton Quotes

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul.

When ambition ends, happiness begins.

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.

Be good, keep your feet dry, your eyes open, your heart at peace and your soul in the joy of Christ.

We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.

The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error.

Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.

Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.

We have to have a deep, patient compassion for the fears of men and irrational mania of those who hate or condemn us.

The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.

The least of the work of learning is done in the classroom.

The tighter you squeeze, the less you have.

The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.

To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.

We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.

We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have - for their usefulness.

We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us.

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.

I cannot make the universe obey me. I cannot make other people conform to my own whims and fancies. I cannot make even my own body obey me.

If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.

In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.

Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how.