Quotes from Thomas Merton

If we seek paradise outside ourselves, we cannot have paradise in our hearts.

Because of their enmity you will be left alone. They will cast you out and forsake you.

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

If we have not silence, God is not heard in our music. If we have no rest God, does not bless our work.

There is a subtle but inescapable connection between the "sacred" attitude and the acceptance of one's in most self.

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

In an age where there is much talk about "being yourself," I reserve to myself the right to forget about being myself, since in any case there is very little chance of my being anybody else.

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

There were only a few shepherds at the first Bethlehem. The ox and the donkey understood more of the first Christmas than the high priests in Jerusalem. And it is the same today.

Perhaps I am stronger than I think.

We stumble and fall constantly, even when we are most enlightened.

I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.

It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes.

Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it.

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

The grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.

The artistic experience, at its highest, was actually a natural analogue of mystical experience. It produced a kind of intuitive of perception.

Do not be one of those who, rather than risk failure, never attempts anything.

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

Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.

The fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the wind, and join in the general Dance.

We are obliged to love one another. We are not strictly bound to "like" one another.

Ultimately faith is the only key to the universe. The final meaning of human existence, and the answers to the questions on which all our happiness depends cannot be found in any other way.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.