854 Quotes by Thomas Merton

What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone in the forest at night.

My true personality will be fulfilled in the Mystical Christ in this one way above all, that through me, Christ and His Spirit will be able to love you and all men and God the Father in a way that would be possible in no one else. Love.

The Hindus are not looking for us to send them men who will build schools and hospitals, although those things are good and useful in themselves – and perhaps very badly needed in India: they want to know if we have any saints to send them.

Every breath we draw is a gift of God’s love; every moment of existence is a grace.

Nothing has ever been said about God that hasn’t already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.

Every moment and every event of everyman’s life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men.

Ultimately the only way that I can be myself is to become identified with Him in Whom is hidden the reason and fulfillment of my existence.

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.

He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas.