Thomas Merton quotes

Thomas Merton, an influential spiritual writer, poet, and Trappist monk, left a remarkable legacy through his profound contemplative teachings. Born in France in 1915, Merton later moved to the United States, where he joined the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. Best known for his autobiography, "The Seven Storey Mountain," Merton's writings centered on themes of solitude, social justice, and interfaith dialogue. His insightful words continue to resonate today, inspiring countless individuals on their spiritual journeys. Discover the transformative wisdom of Thomas Merton and explore his timeless works for spiritual enlightenment and personal growth. Experience the power of his teachings and absorb his captivating insights into the complexities of human existence, all through the enlightening writings of Thomas Merton.

You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.

- Thomas Merton

The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.

- Thomas Merton

The greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer us great evils masking as the greatest goods.

- Thomas Merton

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

- Thomas Merton

Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism.

- Thomas Merton

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.

- Thomas Merton

Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.

- Thomas Merton

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.

- Thomas Merton

Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed - but hate these things in yourself, not in another.

- Thomas Merton

If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.

- Thomas Merton

If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.

- Thomas Merton

For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be.

- Thomas Merton

But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question.

- Thomas Merton

A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly.

- Thomas Merton

A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.

- Thomas Merton

Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity.

- Thomas Merton

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.

- Thomas Merton

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

- Thomas Merton

The tighter you squeeze, the less you have.

- Thomas Merton

A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.

- Thomas Merton

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.

- Thomas Merton

We do not exist for ourselves.

- Thomas Merton

A daydream is an evasion.

- Thomas Merton

Perhaps I am stronger than I think.

- Thomas Merton

The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.

- Thomas Merton

By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.

- Thomas Merton

In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.

- Thomas Merton

October is a fine and dangerous season in America. a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You go to college, and every course in the catalogue looks wonderful.

- Thomas Merton

Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.

- Thomas Merton

Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul.

- Thomas Merton