Thomas Merton

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

“Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.”

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

“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 alone, and it is only when we are fully convinced of this fact that we begin to love ourselves properly and thus also love others.”

“A daydream is an evasion.”

“Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.”

“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.”

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

“If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.”

“When ambition ends, happiness begins.”

“Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.”

“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.”

“Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“Be good, keep your feet dry, your eyes open, your heart at peace and your soul in the joy of Christ.”