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Thomas Merton Quotes


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.

The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.

The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error.

The least of the work of learning is done in the classroom.

The tighter you squeeze, the less you have.

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

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.

To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.

We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.

We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have - for their usefulness.

We do not exist for ourselves.

We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us.

We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.

We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.

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.

Wheels of fire, cosmic, rich, full-bodied honest victories over desperation.

When ambition ends, happiness begins.

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.