Quotes from Thomas Merton
The root of war is fear.
- Thomas Merton
There is not a flower that opens, not a seed that falls into the ground, and not an ear of wheat that nods on the end of its stalk in the wind that does not preach and proclaim the greatness and the mercy of God to the whole world.
- Thomas Merton
Violence is essentially wordless, and it can begin only where thought and rational communication have broken down.
- Thomas Merton
We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full.
- Thomas Merton
The biggest human temptation is... to settle for too little.
- Thomas Merton
A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.
- Thomas Merton
We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners, all our life!
- Thomas Merton
What we have to be is what we are.
- Thomas Merton
But 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 Merton
The light of truth burns without a flicker in the depths of a house that is shaken with storms of passion and fear.
- Thomas Merton
And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. it is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept.
- Thomas Merton
There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.
- Thomas Merton