Thomas Merton Quotes & Sayings

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”

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

“Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.”

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

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.”

“Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.”

“Perhaps I am stronger than I think.”

“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.”

“Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.”