Thomas Merton Quotes
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151. “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

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

— Thomas Merton

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

— Thomas Merton

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

— Thomas Merton

155. “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

156. “Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.”

— Thomas Merton

157. “It is in the ordinary duties and labors of life that the Christian can and should develop his spiritual union with God.”

— Thomas Merton

158. “We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.”

— Thomas Merton

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

— Thomas Merton

160. “Love is not a matter of getting what you want. Quite the contrary. The insistence on always having what you want, on always being satisfied, on always being fulfilled, makes love impossible.”

— Thomas Merton

161. “The light of truth burns without a flicker in the depths of a house that is shaken with storms of passion and fear.”

— Thomas Merton

162. “Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.”

— Thomas Merton

163. “A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy.”

— Thomas Merton

164. “Solitude is so necessary both for society and for the individual that when society fails to provide sufficient solitude to develop the inner life of the persons who compose it, they rebel and seek false solitudes.”

— Thomas Merton

165. “Art is not an end in itself. It introduces the soul into a higher spiritual order, which it expresses and in some sense explains.”

— Thomas Merton

166. “We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full.”

— Thomas Merton

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

— Thomas Merton

168. “Faith is a light of such supreme brilliance that it dazzles the mind and darkens all its visions of other realities, but in the end when we become used to the new light, we gain a new view of all reality transfigured and elevated in the light itself.”

— Thomas Merton

169. “For the birds there is not a time that they tell, but the point vierge between darkness and light, between being and nonbeing. You can tell yourself the time by their waking, if you are experienced. But that is your folly, not theirs.”

— Thomas Merton

170. “The real reason why so few men believe in God is that they have ceased to believe that even a God can love them.”

— Thomas Merton

171. “The truth never becomes clear as long as we assume that each one of us, individually, is the center of the universe.”

— Thomas Merton

172. “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.”

— Thomas Merton

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

— Thomas Merton

174. “Thinking prevents the unconscious from speaking.”

— Thomas Merton

175. “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.”

— Thomas Merton

176. “Zen insight is not our awareness, but Being’s awareness of itself in us.”

— Thomas Merton

177. “The fruitfulness of our lives depends in large measure in our ability to doubt our own words and to question the value of our own work. The man who completely trusts his own estimate of himself is doomed to sterility.”

— Thomas Merton

178. “Charity is without fear: having given all that it has, it has nothing left to lose.”

— Thomas Merton

179. “If Zen has any preference it is for glass that is plain, has no color, and is “just glass.””

— Thomas Merton

180. “It is true that we are called to create a better world. But we are first of all called to a more immediate and exalted task: that of creating our own lives.”

— Thomas Merton

181. “The purpose of our lives is to find the purpose of our lives.”

— Thomas Merton

182. “Lovely morning! How lovely life can be!”

— Thomas Merton

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

— Thomas Merton

184. “AN ELDER was asked by a certain soldier if God would forgive a sinner. And he said to him: Tell me, beloved, if your cloak is torn, will you throw it away? The soldier replied and said: No. I will mend it and put it back on. The elder said to him: If you take care of your cloak, will God not be merciful to His own image?”

— Thomas Merton

185. “It is by desiring to grow in love that we receive the Holy Spirit, and the thirst for more charity is the effect of this more abundant reception.”

— Thomas Merton

186. “We must slow down to a human tempo and we’ll begin to have time to listen.”

— Thomas Merton

187. “What I do is live, how I pray is breathe, what I wear is pants.”

— Thomas Merton

188. “On Pride: This sickness is most dangerous when it succeeds in looking like humility. When a proud man thinks he is humble his case is hopeless.”

— Thomas Merton

189. “The least of the work of learning is done in the classroom.”

— Thomas Merton

190. “Love is free; it does not depend on the desirability of its object, but loves for love’s sake.”

— Thomas Merton

191. “To Serve the God of Love one must be free, one must face the terrible responsibility of the decision to love in spite of all unworthiness whether in oneself or in one’s neighbor.”

— Thomas Merton

192. “The logic of the poet – that is, the logic of language or the experience itself – develops the way a living organism grows: it spreads out towards what it loves, and is heliotropic, like a plant.”

— Thomas Merton

193. “There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relation with realities outside and above us.”

— Thomas Merton

194. “To desire Him to be merciful to us is to acknowledge Him as God. To seek His pity when we deserve no pity is to ask Him to be just with a justice so holy that it knows no evil and shows mercy to everyone who does not fly from Him in despair.”

— Thomas Merton

195. “Each individual Christian and each new age of the Church has to make this rediscovery, this return to the source of Christian life.”

— Thomas Merton

196. “Duty does not have to be dull. Love can make it beautiful and fill it with life.”

— Thomas Merton

197. “A Christian is committed to the belief that Love and Mercy are the most powerful forces on earth.”

— Thomas Merton

198. “Our happiness consists in sharing the happiness of God, the perfection of His unlimited freedom, the perfection of His love.”

— Thomas Merton

199. “The artist should preach nothing-not even his own autonomy. His art should speak its own truth, and in so doing it will be in harmony with every other kind of truth- moral, metaphysical, mystical.”

— Thomas Merton

200. “God makes us ask ourselves questions most often when He intends to resolve them. He gives us needs that He alone can satisfy, and awakens capacities that He means to fulfill. Any perplexity is liable to be a spiritual gestation, leading to a new birth and a mystical regeneration.”

— Thomas Merton