854 Quotes by Thomas Merton

I can only become perfectly free by serving the will of God.

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

When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, then society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate.

In the spiritual life there is no such thing as an indifference to love or hate.

Be good, keep your feet dry, your eyes open, your heart at peace and your soul in the joy of Christ.

I suppose what makes me most glad is that we all recognize each other in this metaphysical space of silence and happening, and get some sense, for a moment, that we are full of paradise without knowing it.

True encounter with Christ liberates something within us, a power we did not know we had, a capacity to grow and change.

Those who think they 'know' from the beginning will never in fact come to know anything.

The imagination should be allowed a certain amount of time to browse around.