Top 500 Thomas Merton Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “I shall lead you through the loneliness, the solitude you will not understand; but it is my shortcut to your soul.”

— Thomas Merton

102. “When I pray for peace, I pray not only that the enemies of my own country may cease to want war, but above all that my country will cease to do the things that make war inevitable.”

— Thomas Merton

103. “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.”

— Thomas Merton

104. “What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we cannot cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?”

— Thomas Merton

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

— Thomas Merton

106. “The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.”

— Thomas Merton

107. “We are already ONE. We just think we are separate.”

— Thomas Merton

108. “Whose silence are you?”

— Thomas Merton

109. “One might say I have decided to marry the silence of the forest. The sweet dark warmth of the whole world will have to be my wife.”

— Thomas Merton

110. “The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.”

— Thomas Merton

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

— Thomas Merton

112. “Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.”

— Thomas Merton

113. “Ultimately faith is the only key to the universe. The final meaning of human existence, and the answers to the questions on which all our happiness depends cannot be found in any other way.”

— Thomas Merton

114. “If you have love you will do all things well.”

— Thomas Merton

115. “For if I am to love truly and freely, I must be able to give something that is truly my own to another. If my heart does not first belong to me, how can I give it to another?”

— Thomas Merton

116. “When we are strong, we are always much greater than the things that happen to us.”

— Thomas Merton

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

— Thomas Merton

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

— Thomas Merton

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

— Thomas Merton

120. “Music and art and poetry attune the soul to God.”

— Thomas Merton

121. “The true inner self must be drawn up like a jewel from the bottom of the sea, rescued from confusion, from indistinction, from immersion in the common, the nondescript, the trivial, the sordid, the evanescent.”

— Thomas Merton

122. “Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already I am.”

— Thomas Merton

123. “Today the artist has inherited the combined functions of hermit, pilgrim, prophet, priest, shaman, sorcerer, soothsayer, alchemist.”

— Thomas Merton

124. “Every other man is a piece of myself, for I am a part and a member of mankind.”

— Thomas Merton

125. “If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world.”

— Thomas Merton

126. “It might be good to open our eyes and see.”

— Thomas Merton

127. “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.”

— Thomas Merton

128. “Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice.”

— Thomas Merton

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

— Thomas Merton

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

— Thomas Merton

131. “God, Who is everywhere, never leaves us. Yet He seems sometimes to be present, sometimes to be absent. If we do not know Him well, we do not realize that He may be more present to us when He is absent than when He is present.”

— Thomas Merton

132. “While some men see ordinary happenings, others see divine light and guidance.”

— Thomas Merton

133. “Happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found.”

— Thomas Merton

134. “We are not converted only once in our lives but many times and this endless series of conversions and inner revolutions leads to our transformation.”

— Thomas Merton

135. “Before we can become who we really are, we must become conscious of the fact that the person who we think we are, here and now, is at best an impostor and a stranger.”

— Thomas Merton

136. “The end of the world will be legal.”

— Thomas Merton

137. “In humility is the greatest freedom. As long as you have to defend the imaginary self that you think is important, you lose your peace of heart.”

— Thomas Merton

138. “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.”

— Thomas Merton

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

— Thomas Merton

140. “But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question.”

— Thomas Merton

141. “To be unknown to God is altogether too much privacy.”

— Thomas Merton

142. “To be alone by being part of the universe-fitting in completely to an environment of woods and silence and peace. Everything you do becomes a unity and a prayer. Unity within and without.”

— Thomas Merton

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

— Thomas Merton

144. “The fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the wind, and join in the general Dance.”

— Thomas Merton

145. “The center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth.”

— Thomas Merton

146. “In the devil’s theology, the important thing is to be absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong.”

— Thomas Merton

147. “In an age where there is much talk about “being yourself,” I reserve to myself the right to forget about being myself, since in any case there is very little chance of my being anybody else.”

— Thomas Merton

148. “Teach me to go to the country beyond words and beyond names.”

— Thomas Merton

149. “To be ordinary is not a choice: It is the usual freedom of men without visions.”

— Thomas Merton

150. “For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God’s will, to be what God wants us to be.”

— Thomas Merton