Thomas Merton Quotes

I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

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.

Good moral actions are not enough. Everything in us, from the very depths, must be cleansed and reordered.

Self-conquest is really self-surrender. Yet before we can surrender ourselves we must become ourselves. For no one can give up what he does not possess.

Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.

Humility is a virtue, not a neurosis.

A bad book about the love of God remains a bad book.

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the other.... The whole purpose of life is to live by love.

He who hopes in God trusts God, Whom he never sees, to bring him to the possession of things that are beyond imagination.

Love is our true destiny.

Not all of us are called to be hermits, but all of us need enough silence and solitude in our lives to enable the deeper voice of our own self to be heard at least occasionally.

No one is so wrong as the man who knows all the answers.

One of the first things to learn if you want to be a contemplative is to mind your own business. Nothing is more suspicious, in a man who seems holy, than an impatient desire to reform other men.

The sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is all in all.

Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers, and rewarded according to their capacity.

We cannot love ourselves unless we love others, and we cannot love others unless we love ourselves. But a selfish love of ourselves makes us incapable of loving others.

Christ is born to us today, in order that he may appear to the whole world through us.

Our real journey in life is interior.

Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can only discover from within.

The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.

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.

The sacred attitude is, then, one of deep and fundamental respect for the real in whatever new form it may present itself.

If you have never had any distractions you don't know how to pray.

Saints are what they are not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everyone else.

Do not be one of those who, rather than risk failure, never attempts anything.

Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice.

Contemplation is the loving sense of this life, this presence and this eternity.

My spiritual goal is to one day walk into God and disappear.

Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity.

The only way to make a man worthy of love is by loving him.

The gate of heaven is everywhere.

If we seek paradise outside ourselves, we cannot have paradise in our hearts.

Meditation is one of the ways in which the spiritual man keeps himself awake.

Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism.

If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.

When ambition ends, happiness begins.

Technology is not in itself opposed to spirituality and to religion. But it presents a great temptation.

Our minds are like crows. They pick up everything that glitters, no matter how uncomfortable our nests get with all that metal in them.

You cannot be a man of faith unless you know how to doubt.

The meaning of life is found in openness to being and "being present" in full awareness.

What we have to be is what we are.

One has to be alone, under the sky, Before everything falls into place and one finds his or her own place in the midst of it all. We have to have the humility to realize ourselves as part of nature.

For me to be a saint means to be myself.

The great thing, and the only thing, is to adore and praise GOD.

I can depend less and less on my own power and sense of direction...It is so strange to advance backwards and get where you are going in a totally unexpected way

Now anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity. It is the fruit of unanswered questions. But questions cannot go unanswered unless they first be asked.

Infinite sharing is the law of God s inner life.

We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners, all our life!

Thinking prevents the unconscious from speaking.

God has brought me to Kentucky...the precise place he has chosen for my sanctification.