Quotes from Thomas Merton

Just as bees are driven out by smoke, and their honey is taken away from them, so a life of ease drives out the fear of the Lord from man's soul and takes away all his good works.

To really know our 'nothingness' we must also love it. And we cannot love it unless we see that it is good. And we cannot see that it is good unless we accept it.

It is good for the soul to be in solitude for a great part of the time. But if it should seek solitude for its own comfort and consolation, it will have to endure more darkness and more anguish and more trial. Pure prayer only takes possession of our hearts for good when we no longer desire any special light or grace or consolation for ourselves, and pray without any thought of our own satisfaction.

IT is not that someone else is preventing you from living happily; you yourself do not know what you want. Rather than admit this, you pretend that someone is keeping you from exercising your liberty. Who is this? It is you yourself.

We do not know we are full of paradise because we are so full of our own noise that we cannot hear God singing us and all things into being.

Providence, that is the love of God, is very wise in turning away from the self-will of men, and in having nothing to do with them, and leaving them to their own devices, as long as they are intent on governing themselves, to show them to what depths of futility and sorrow their own helplessness is capable of dragging them. And

Is it any wonder that there can be no peace in a world where everything possible is done to guarantee that the youth of every nation will grow up absolutely without moral and religious discipline, and without the shadow of an interior life, or of that spirituality and charity and faith which alone can safeguard the treaties and agreements made by governments?

One bird sits still Watching the work of God:

The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived. ... If we want to be spiritual, then, let us first of all live our lives. Let us not fear the responsibilities and the inevitable distractions of the work appointed by the will of God.

Difference between a vocation and a category. Those who fulfill their vocation to sanctity--or who are fulfilling it--are by that very fact unaccountable. They do not fit into categories. If you use a category in speaking of them you have to qualify statement at once, as if they also belonged to some completely different category. In actual fact, they are in no category, they are particular themselves...

If we are called by God to holiness of life, and if holiness is beyond our natural power to achieve (which it certainly is) then it follows that God himself must give us the light, the strength, and the courage to fulfill the task he requires of us. He will certainly give us the grace we need.

our material riches unfortunately imply a spiritual, cultural, and moral poverty that are perhaps far greater than we see.