Thomas Merton

Quotes

• “By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pur...”
• “You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the...”
• “If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am ...”
• “....it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they ha...”
• “Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands gr...”
• “The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Other...”
• “Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look...”
• “Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselv...”
• “Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.”
• “Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul.”
• “Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.”
• “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
• “Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.”
• “Pride makes us artificial; humility makes us real”