854 Quotes by Thomas Merton

The secret of my full identity is hidden in Him. He alone can make me who I am, or rather who I will be when at last I fully begin to be. But unless I desire this identity and work to find it with Him and in Him, the work will never be done.

May God prevent us from becoming “right-thinking men”-that is to say men who agree perfectly with their own police.

This, then, is our desert: to live facing despair, but not to consent. To trample it down under hope in the Cross. To wage war against despair unceasingly.

For true humility is, in a way, a very real despair: despair of myself, in order that I may hope entirely in You.

A man becomes a solitary at the moment when, no matter what may be his external surroundings, he is suddenly aware of his own inalienable solitude and sees that he will never be anything but solitary.

Everything that happens to the poor, the meek, the desolate, the mourners, the despised, happens to Christ.

As a matter of fact, it is often harder to manifest the good that is in us than the evil.

That is God’s call to us – simply to be people who are content to live close to him and to renew the kind of life in which the closeness is felt and experienced.

Stop asking yourself questions that have no meaning. Or if they have, you’ll find out when you need to – find out both the questions and the answers.