854 Quotes by Thomas Merton

In humility is the greatest freedom. As long as you have to defend the imaginary self that you think is important, you lose your piece of heart. As soon as you compare that shadow with the shadows of other people, you lose all joy, because you have begun to trade in unrealities and there is no joy in things that do not exist.

The artistic experience, at its highest, was actually a natural analogue of mystical experience. It produced a kind of intuitive of perception.

If you have never had any distractions you don't know how to pray.

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

Humble people can do great things with uncommon perfection because they are no longer concerned about their own interests and their own reputation, and therefore they no longer need to waste their efforts in defending them.

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.

Zen insight is not our awareness, but Being's awareness of itself in us.

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness. This mysterious unity and integrity is wisdom, the mother of us all, "natura naturans." There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fountain of action and joy. It rises up in wordless gentleness, and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being.

Violence is essentially wordless. and it can begin only where thought and rational communication have broken down.