854 Quotes by Thomas Merton

Man was made for the highest activity, which is, in fact, his rest,

To love our nothingness we must love everything in us that the proud man loves when he loves himself. But we must love it all for exactly the opposite reason.

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.

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

If you want to have a spiritual life you must unify your life. A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all.

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.

To be unknown to God is altogether too much privacy.

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.

One opens the inner doors of one's heart to the infinite silences of the Spirit, out of whose abysses love wells up without fail and gives itself to all.