A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy.
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.
More Thomas Merton Quotes
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Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.
THOMAS MERTON -
Our real journey in life is interior; It is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. Never was it more necessary to respond to that action.
THOMAS MERTON -
It is my belief, that we should not be too sure of having found Christ in ourselves until we have found him also in that part of humanity that is most remote from our own.
THOMAS MERTON -
A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly.
THOMAS MERTON -
To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.
THOMAS MERTON -
When your tongue is silent, you can rest in the silence of the forest. When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks to you. It tells you of its unreality and of the Reality of God. But when your mind is silent, then the forest suddenly becomes magnificently real and blazes transparently with the Reality of God.
THOMAS MERTON -
No one is so wrong as the man who knows all the answers.
THOMAS MERTON -
Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God: for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice and mediocrity and materialism and selfishness that have chilled his faith.
THOMAS MERTON -
The artist should preach nothing-not even his own autonomy. His art should speak its own truth, and in so doing it will be in harmony with every other kind of truth- moral, metaphysical, mystical.
THOMAS MERTON -
Prayer is not so much a way to find God as a way of resting in him who loves us, who is near to us.
THOMAS MERTON -
For perfect hope is achieved on the brink of despair, when instead of falling over the edge, we find ourselves walking on air.
THOMAS MERTON -
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.
THOMAS MERTON -
A faith that is afraid of other people is no faith at all.
THOMAS MERTON -
If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world.
THOMAS MERTON -
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
THOMAS MERTON






