Thomas Merton

There is not true intimacy between souls who do not know how to respect one another's solitude.

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.

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.

The man who lives in division is living in death. He cannot find himself because he is lost; he has ceased to be a reality. The person he believes himself to be is a bad dream.

Those who think they 'know' from the beginning will never in fact _x000D_ come to know anything.

For language to have meaning, there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He who retires into silence does not necessarily hate language. Perhaps it is love and respect for language which imposes silence upon him. For the mercy of God is not heard in words unless it is heard, both before and after the words are spoken, in silence.

And that is why the man who wants to see clearly, before he will believe, never starts on the journey.

Music and art and poetry attune the soul to God.

If Zen has any preference it is for glass that is plain, has no color, and is "just glass."

Show us your Christ, Lady, after this our exile, yes: but show Him to us also now, show Him to us here, while we are still wanderers.

We cannot master everything, taste everything, understand everything, drain every experience to its last dregs. But if we have the courage to let almost everything else go, we will probably be able to retain the thing necessary for us-whatever it may be. If we are too eager to have everything, we will almost certainly miss even the one thing we need

Christ is born to us today, in order that he may appear to the whole world through us.

How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man's city?

God, have mercy on me in the blindness in which I hope I am seeking You!

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the other.... The whole purpose of life is to live by love.

To be risen with Christ means not only that one has a choice and that one may live by a higher law - the law of grace and love - but that one must do so. The first obligation of the Christian is to maintain their freedom from all superstitions, all blind taboos and religious formalities, indeed from all empty forms of legalism.

We have to have a deep, patient compassion for the fears of others and irrational mania of those who hate or condemn us.

The whole world has risen in Christ... If God is 'all in all,' then everything is in fact paradise, because it is filled with the glory and presence of God, and nothing is any more separated from God.

A faith that is afraid of other people is no faith at all.

As long as I am content to know that He is infinitely greater than I, and that I cannot know Him unless He shows himself to me, I will have Peace, and He will be near me and in me, and I will rest in Him.

The gate of heaven is everywhere.