Quotes from Thomas Merton
Hurry ruins saints as well as artists.
- Thomas Merton
For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.
- Thomas Merton
Show us your Christ, Lady, after this our exile, yes: but show Him to us also now, show Him to us here, while we are still wanderers.
- Thomas Merton
The peace produced by grace is a spiritual stability too deep for violence — it is unshakeable
- 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
Indeed, it is a kind of quintessence of pride to hate and fear even the kind and legitimate approval of those who love us! I mean, to resent it as a humiliating patronage.
- Thomas Merton
One of the first things to learn if you want to be a contemplative is to mind your own business. Nothing is more suspicious, in a man who seems holy, than an impatient desire to reform other men.
- Thomas Merton
The only way to make a man worthy of love is by loving him.
- Thomas Merton
You cannot be a man of faith unless you know how to doubt.
- Thomas Merton
How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man's city?
- Thomas Merton
Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God.
- Thomas Merton
To love our nothingness we must love everything in us that the proud man loves when he loves himself. But we must love it all for exactly the opposite reason.
- Thomas Merton