No one is so wrong as the man who knows all the answers.
THOMAS MERTONNo one is so wrong as the man who knows all the answers.
THOMAS MERTONLove is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.
THOMAS MERTONWe 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.
THOMAS MERTONOur real journey in life is interior.
THOMAS MERTONThe beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves.
THOMAS MERTONSelf-conquest is really self-surrender. Yet before we can surrender ourselves we must become ourselves. For no one can give up what he does not possess.
THOMAS MERTONThe greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds.
THOMAS MERTONYou 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 MERTONWeaknesses and deficiencies play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another.
THOMAS MERTONA faith that is afraid of other people is no faith at all.
THOMAS MERTONOur 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 MERTONMay God prevent us from becoming “right-thinking men”-that is to say men who agree perfectly with their own police.
THOMAS MERTONFrom the moment you put a piece of bread in your mouth you are part of the world. Who grew the wheat? Who made the bread? Where did it come from? You are in relationship with all who brought it to the table. We are least separate and most in common when we eat and drink.
THOMAS MERTONBut 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 think I am living for.
THOMAS MERTONIn Silence God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.
THOMAS MERTONPeople may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.
THOMAS MERTON