Quotes from Thomas Merton

When ambition ends, happiness begins.

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

True happiness is found in unselfish Love, A love which increases in proportion as it is shared.

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

Love is the epiphany of God in our poverty.

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

It is in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and sister.

Love not only prefers the good of another to my own, but it does not even compare the two.

Love is our true destiny.

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the other.... The whole purpose of life is to live by love.

A bad book about the love of God remains a bad book.

We cannot love ourselves unless we love others, and we cannot love others unless we love ourselves. But a selfish love of ourselves makes us incapable of loving others.

It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who He is, and who we are.

If you have love you will do all things well.

To love blindly is to love selfishly, because the goal of such love is not the real advantage of the beloved but only the exercise of love in our own souls.

Love is an intensification of life.

I brought all the instincts of a writer with me into the monastery.

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

He who hopes in God trusts God, Whom he never sees, to bring him to the possession of things that are beyond imagination.

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

The truth that many people never understand until it is too late is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer.

Love is the door to eternity.

To find love I must enter into the sanctuary where it is hidden, which is the mystery of God.

Love is perfect in proportion to it's freedom.