Thomas Merton

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.

Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.

We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.

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.

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.

October is a fine and dangerous season in America. a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You go to college and every course in the catalogue looks wonderful.

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

The least of the work of learning is done in the classroom.

We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have - for their usefulness.

We do not exist for ourselves.

By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure a cooler blue the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.

We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness we do not even know that we have fallen.

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

Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments.

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

The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings which are all part of one another and all involved in one another.

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.

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