Thomas Merton Quotes, Thoughts and images

The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds

In Silence God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.

Nothing has ever been said about God that hasn't already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.

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

When you see God in everyone, then they see God in you.

Let us come alive to the splendor that is all around us and see the beauty in ordinary things.

Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.

Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder.

For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be.

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.

Every breath we draw is a gift of God's love; every moment of existence is a grace.

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

Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already I am.

We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.

The purpose of our lives is to find the purpose of our lives.

If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world.

Our real journey in life is interior.

Fear narrows the little entrance of our hearts. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves.

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.

The sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is all in all.

The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.

Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.

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

Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.

For although God is right with us and in us and out of us and all through us, we have to go on journeys to find him.