854 Quotes by Thomas Merton

The humble person receives praise the way a clean window takes the light of the sun. The truer and more intense the light is, the less you see of the glass.

Teach me to go to the country beyond words and beyond names.

Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it.

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.

Lovely morning! How lovely life can be!

We who claim to love peace and justice must always be careful that we do not use our righteousness to provoke the violent, and in this way bring about the conflict for which we, too, like other men, are hungering in secret, and with suppressed barbarity.

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

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.

The truth never becomes clear as long as we assume that each one of us, individually, is the center of the universe.