By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The s...
THOMAS MERTON It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as Gods will when you yourself have warm ...
THOMAS MERTON Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by re...
THOMAS MERTON You must realize that it is the ordinary way of God's dealings with us that our ideas do not work ou...
THOMAS MERTON I am willing to admit that some people might live there for years, or even a lifetime, so protected ...
THOMAS MERTON The point where you become free not to kill, not to exploit, not to destroy, not to compete, because...
THOMAS MERTON Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
THOMAS MERTON The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on th...
THOMAS MERTON The deepest of level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless ... beyond...
THOMAS MERTON The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not t...
THOMAS MERTON If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, b...
THOMAS MERTON Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not w...
THOMAS MERTON Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with an...
THOMAS MERTON Memory is corrupted and ruined by a crowd of memories. If I am going to have a true memory, t...
THOMAS MERTON October is a fine and dangerous season in America...a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You g...
THOMAS MERTON We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at th...
THOMAS MERTON Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not ou...
THOMAS MERTON I cannot make the universe obey me. I cannot make other people conform to my own whims and fancies. ...
THOMAS MERTON What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from...
THOMAS MERTON The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit ...
THOMAS MERTON We have what we seek. It is there all the time, and if we give it time it will make itself known to ...
THOMAS MERTON We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual ...
THOMAS MERTON Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparentl...
THOMAS MERTON Modern man believes he is fruitful and productive when his ego is aggressively affirmed, when he is ...
THOMAS MERTON Each one of us has some kind of vocation. We are all called by God to share in His life and in His K...
THOMAS MERTON The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living...
THOMAS MERTON The monk in hiding himself from the world becomes not less than himself, not less of a person, but m...
THOMAS MERTON I certainly do not consider myself permanently dedicated to a crusade for peace and I am beginning t...
THOMAS MERTON Attachment to spiritual things is.. just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else.
THOMAS MERTON One of the most important-and most neglected-elements in the beginning of the interior life is the a...
THOMAS MERTON In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for finding h...
THOMAS MERTON To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many...
THOMAS MERTON We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, m...
THOMAS MERTON The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more that you try to ...
THOMAS MERTON What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us fro...
THOMAS MERTON Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
THOMAS MERTON The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid...
THOMAS MERTON If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell
THOMAS MERTON At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a po...
THOMAS MERTON Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
THOMAS MERTON The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid...
THOMAS MERTON Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act wit...
THOMAS MERTON Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism tha...
THOMAS MERTON What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from...
THOMAS MERTON The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.
THOMAS MERTON The least of the work of learning is done in the classroom.
THOMAS MERTON If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.
THOMAS MERTON The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.
THOMAS MERTON We do not exist for ourselves alone, and it is only when we are fully convinced of this fact that we...
THOMAS MERTON A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is s...
THOMAS MERTON The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I hav...
THOMAS MERTON Perhaps I am stronger than I think.
THOMAS MERTON When ambition ends, happiness begins.
THOMAS MERTON Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul.
THOMAS MERTON We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, m...
THOMAS MERTON Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.
THOMAS MERTON It is therefore of supreme importance that we consent to live not for ourselves but for others. When...
THOMAS MERTON A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying [God]....
THOMAS MERTON My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for c...
THOMAS MERTON But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question.
THOMAS MERTON October is a fine and dangerous season in America. a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You go...
THOMAS MERTON Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a ...
THOMAS MERTON Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.
THOMAS MERTON The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living...
THOMAS MERTON Commemoration of Thomas Merton, Monk, Spiritual Writer, 1968 We must remember that our experien...
THOMAS MERTON Feast of Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, 865 We must be willing...
THOMAS MERTON Commemoration of Thomas Merton, Monk, Spiritual Writer, 1968 Our knowledge of God is paradoxica...
THOMAS MERTON Feast of Mary Sumner, Founder of the Mothers' Union, 1921 We must be willing to accept the bitt...
THOMAS MERTON Commemoration of Lanfranc, Prior of Le Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1089 Prayer and love are le...
THOMAS MERTON Prayer is the movement of trust, of gratitude, of adoration, or of sorrow, that places us before God...
THOMAS MERTON Commemoration of Thomas Merton, Monk, Spiritual Writer, 1968 The great thing, and the only thing,...
THOMAS MERTON Commemoration of Thomas Merton, Monk, Spiritual Writer, 1968 This matter of "salvation" is, whe...
THOMAS MERTON The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own ...
THOMAS MERTON Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer be...
THOMAS MERTON You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need...
THOMAS MERTON People have no idea what one saint can do: for sanctity is stronger than the whole of hell.
THOMAS MERTON In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for 'find...
THOMAS MERTON A daydream is an evasion.
THOMAS MERTON No one can find God without having first been found by Him. A monk is a man who seeks God because he...
THOMAS MERTON Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present,...
THOMAS MERTON To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to li...
THOMAS MERTON Wheels of fire, cosmic, rich, full-bodied honest victories over desperation.
THOMAS MERTON October is a fine and dangerous season in America . . . a wonderful time to begin anything at all.
THOMAS MERTON We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.
THOMAS MERTON We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to...
THOMAS MERTON The least of the work of learning is done in the classroom
THOMAS MERTON Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone-we find it with anot...
THOMAS MERTON We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unit...
THOMAS MERTON The least of learning is done in the classrooms.
THOMAS MERTON An author in a Trappist monastery is like a duck in a chicken coop. And he would give anything in th...
THOMAS MERTON Faith is a light of such supreme brilliance that it dazzles the mind and darkens all its visions of ...
THOMAS MERTON It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more ...
THOMAS MERTON The tighter you squeeze, the less you have.
THOMAS MERTON Attachment to spiritual things is... just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else.
THOMAS MERTON It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more ...
THOMAS MERTON If I had a message to my contemporaries it is surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, ...
THOMAS MERTON If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy. If you write for men--you may make ...
THOMAS MERTON Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own s...
THOMAS MERTON The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that...
THOMAS MERTON For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact ...
THOMAS MERTON There is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace, my happiness depend: to discover myse...
THOMAS MERTON We have the choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real...and the hidden, inn...
THOMAS MERTON I was not sure where I was going, and I could not see what I would do when I got [there]. But you sa...
THOMAS MERTON Most of the world is either asleep or dead. The religious people are, for the most part, asleep. The...
THOMAS MERTON To know the Cross is not merely to know our own sufferings. For the Cross is the sign of salvation, ...
THOMAS MERTON One of the effects of original sin is an instinctive prejudice in favour of our own selfish desires....
THOMAS MERTON In actual fact, conventions are the death of real tradition as they are of all real life. They are p...
THOMAS MERTON God has left sin in the world in order that there may be forgiveness: not only the secret forgivenes...
THOMAS MERTON True happiness is not found in any other reward than that of being united with God. If I seek some o...
THOMAS MERTON In all His acts God orders all things, whether good or evil, for the good of those who know Him and ...
THOMAS MERTON There is something in the depths of our being that hungers for wholeness and finality. Because we ar...
THOMAS MERTON Everything in modern city life is calculated to keep man from entering into himself and thinking abo...
THOMAS MERTON The Lord did not create suffering. Pain and death came into the world with the fall of man. But afte...
THOMAS MERTON God, Who is everywhere, never leaves us. Yet He seems sometimes to be present, sometimes to be absen...
THOMAS MERTON Art enables us to find ourselves and loose ourselves at the same time.
THOMAS MERTON One who is content with what he has, and who accepts the fact that he inevitably misses very much in...
THOMAS MERTON Who is willing to be satisfied with a job that expresses all his limitations? He will accept such wo...
THOMAS MERTON We are obliged to love one another. We are not strictly bound to 'like' one another. Love governs th...
THOMAS MERTON Every man becomes the image of the God he adores.
He whose worship is directed to a dead thing ...
THOMAS MERTON A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly.
THOMAS MERTON The real reason why so few men believe in God is that they have ceased to believe that even a God ca...
THOMAS MERTON God does not demand that every man attain to what is theoretically highest and best. It is better to...
THOMAS MERTON For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God'...
THOMAS MERTON The greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer...
THOMAS MERTON But the man who is not afraid to admit everything that he sees to be wrong with himself, and yet rec...
THOMAS MERTON Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without th...
THOMAS MERTON It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done. In ...
THOMAS MERTON The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround ...
THOMAS MERTON To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us - and He has given us e...
THOMAS MERTON Our Christian destiny is, in fact, a great one: but we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all i...
THOMAS MERTON On the last day of January 1915, in the second year of the Great War, down in the shadow of some Fre...
THOMAS MERTON It's not the easiest thing to meet the friends of someone you've fallen in love with...
THOMAS MERTON The Bible is not primarily a written or printed text to be scrutinized in private, in a scholar's st...
THOMAS MERTON There was this shadow, this double, this writer who had followed me into the cloister. He rides my s...
THOMAS MERTON Be good, keep your feet dry, your eyes open, your heart at peace and your soul in the joy of Christ.
THOMAS MERTON Think of it, all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody…What a thing it is to s...
THOMAS MERTON Life is this simple: We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining thro...
THOMAS MERTON Men in bowlers and dark suits with their rolled-up umbrellas. Men full of propriety, calm and proud,...
THOMAS MERTON Technology is not in itself opposed to spirituality and to religion. But it presents a great temptat...
THOMAS MERTON The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.
THOMAS MERTON In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for ''finding...
THOMAS MERTON In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was sud...
THOMAS MERTON Perhaps I am stronger than I think
THOMAS MERTON The degradation of the sense of symbol in modern society is one of its many signs of spiritual decay...
THOMAS MERTON Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real
THOMAS MERTON Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments.
THOMAS MERTON To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many...
THOMAS MERTON We have to have a deep, patient compassion for the fears of men and irrational mania of those who ha...
THOMAS MERTON To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to li...
THOMAS MERTON We must be willing to accept the bitter truth that, in the end, we may have to become a burden to th...
THOMAS MERTON If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.
THOMAS MERTON Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism.
THOMAS MERTON To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many...
THOMAS MERTON Be still:
There is no longer any need of comment.
It was a lucky wind
That blew away ...
THOMAS MERTON For Abelard, the death of Christ on the Cross did not, strictly speaking, redeem man: it only offere...
THOMAS MERTON And yet with every wound You robbed me of a crime,
And as each blow was paid with Blood,
Y...
THOMAS MERTON Surrender your own poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord. Whether you understand it o...
THOMAS MERTON I brought all the instincts of a writer with me into the monastery.
THOMAS MERTON All men who live only according to their five senses, and seek nothing beyond the gratification of t...
THOMAS MERTON Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to t...
THOMAS MERTON Power always protects the good of some at the expense of all others.
THOMAS MERTON I suppose what makes me most glad is that we all recognize each other in this metaphysical space of ...
THOMAS MERTON What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from...
THOMAS MERTON We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at th...
THOMAS MERTON We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace ...
THOMAS MERTON The Bible is not primarily a written or printed text to be scrutinized in private, in a scholar's st...
THOMAS MERTON It is in the ordinary duties and labors of life that the Christian can and should develop his spirit...
THOMAS MERTON In this age of crowds in which I have determined to be a solitary, perhaps the greatest sin would be...
THOMAS MERTON Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul.
THOMAS MERTON Everyone of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self..We are not very good at recognizing ...
THOMAS MERTON We thank Him less by words than by the serene happiness of silent acceptance. It is our emptiness in...
THOMAS MERTON The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant thi...
THOMAS MERTON The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not t...
THOMAS MERTON Please do not look only at the dark side

All the newspapers in the free world explain why...
THOMAS MERTON The story of the Fall tells us in mythical language that "original sin" is not simply a stigma arbit...
THOMAS MERTON Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.
THOMAS MERTON The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure has tainted the whole...
THOMAS MERTON If we live with possibilities we are exiles from the present which is given us by God to be our own,...
THOMAS MERTON The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on th...
THOMAS MERTON When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. You take your ti...
THOMAS MERTON I read every book about Buster Keaton and Chaplin to see how they worked - it's all about dedica...
PAUL MERTON There's something magical about film, it's the ultimate for me, because it's kind of per...
PAUL MERTON So everybody has some information. The function of the markets is to aggregate that information, eva...
MERTON MILLER Everyone recognizes that's a joke because obviously the number and shape of the pieces doesn'...
MERTON MILLER I'm always amazed to hear of air crash victims so badly mutilated that they have to be identifie...
PAUL MERTON My school days were the happiest days of my life; which should give you some indication of the miser...
PAUL MERTON As an economics undergraduate, I also worked on a part-time basis in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a...
MERTON MILLER You only need to make one big score in finance to be a hero forever.
MERTON MILLER I was trying to organise my DVDs into a sort of chronological order, and I am afraid that it all tra...
PAUL MERTON When I wake up on a Monday morning and I realise I don't have to go and work at the civil servic...
PAUL MERTON If you became a comedian in the '80s, you had to work the circuit and make people laugh. Canned ...
PAUL MERTON When I turned about 12 or 13, I realised that being funny wasn't about remembering jokes. It was...
PAUL MERTON All disc jockeys are without talent. Noel Edmonds - I can't stand Noel Edmonds.
PAUL MERTON Most people might just as well buy a share of the whole market, which pools all the information, tha...
MERTON MILLER When I used to do the Edinburgh Festival, there was a bunch of guys selling fresh oysters and I'...
PAUL MERTON My research interests since then have shifted strongly towards the economic and regulatory problems ...
MERTON MILLER The thing about improvisation is that it's not about what you say. It's listening to what ot...
PAUL MERTON When things are difficult, awful, stressful, the thing that always gets you through is a sense of hu...
PAUL MERTON Beginning with a trip out to Ellis Island, I saw for myself where thousands of European immigrants t...
PAUL MERTON We thought it would have significance for practice but nothing of the magnitude that's occurred over...
ROBERT MERTON