Thomas Merton Quotes

A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly.

We stumble and fall constantly, even when we are most enlightened.

Let us come alive to the splendor that is all around us and see the beauty in ordinary things.

Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false Self. We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.

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

The grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.

The truth that many people never understand until it is too late is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer.

For although God is right with us and in us and out of us and all through us, we have to go on journeys to find him.

Prayer is not so much a way to find God as a way of resting in him...who loves us, who is near to us.

The purpose of our lives is to find the purpose of our lives.

Love is the epiphany of God in our poverty.

Love in fact is the spiritual life, and without it all the other exercises of the spirit, however lofty, are emptied of content and become mere illusions.

When you see God in everyone, then they see God in you.

The biggest human temptation is... to settle for too little.

A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.

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

The true contemplative is one who has discovered the art of finding leisure even in the midst of his work, by working with such a spirit of detachment and recollection that even his work is a prayer

Here is an unspeakable secret: paradise is all around us and we do not understand.

Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.

Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.

One of the strange laws of the contemplative life is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life solves them for you.

The man who sweats under his mask, whose role makes him itch with discomfort, who hates the division in himself, is already beginning to be free.

Modern man believes he is fruitful and productive when his ego is aggressively affirmed, when he is visibly active, and when his action produces obvious results.

Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.

We are already ONE. We just think we are separate.

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.

And that is why the man who wants to see clearly, before he will believe, never starts on the journey.

Even the darkest moments of the liturgy are filled with joy, and Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the lenten fast, is a day of happiness, a Christian feast.

Fear narrows the little entrance of our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves.

There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

We are obliged to love one another. We are not strictly bound to "like" one another.

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.

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.

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.

Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true.

Prayer is an expression of who we are...We are a living incompleteness. We are a gap, an emptiness that calls for fulfillment.

It is in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and sister.

Love not only prefers the good of another to my own, but it does not even compare the two.

A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless, than one that always verges on despair.

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves.

The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.

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

Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.

We do not exist for ourselves.

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

Life is not accomplishing some special work but attaining to a degree of consciousness and inner freedom which is beyond all works and attainments.

The goal of fasting is inner unity.

It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes.

Action is the stream, and contemplation is the spring.

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