Thomas Merton

"Art is the work of man trying to reconcile himself with the universe."

"The world is saved by the people who, while running through it as fast as they can, never forget to stop and smell the flowers."

"We are not here merely to make a living. We are here to enrich the world."

"Blessed are those who prefer others to themselves."

"The seed of God is in us. If we keep ourselves clean, we will grow."

"A man may live as a dog lives, but he cannot die as a dog dies."

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure."

"The gift of one's person is a gift that one can only make when one is fully one's self."

"Nothing can touch me unless I allow it to do so."

"The mark of a saint is not the ability to do extraordinary things, but the ability to do ordinary things extraordinarily well."

"The paradox is that through accepting our limitations, we become limitless."

"Do not rely on other people's approval to validate your choices and your own judgment."

"True freedom requires discipline and patience."

"The Church is my mother but I am also a son of all the generations that have gone before."

"In prayer we discover what we really believe and what we have not believed."

"The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion."

"A person who is not willing to be purified by the fire of his own experience cannot grow spiritually."

"Life consists of thousands of small decisions and choices every day, and the accumulation makes us who we are."

"The greatest disasters in this world are always caused by people who thought they were serving good."

"To be true to one's self is the highest law of human conduct."

"God is present in all things, and is therefore accessible to all people."

"We must love our enemies as ourselves, which is to say we must forgive ourselves for being human."

"The person who has no value for solitude will lose all sense of self."

"Everything that is written for our instruction is meant to guide us toward love."

"Man cannot live by bread alone. He also needs to know where the bread comes from."

"To live without regret requires us to be honest about our past."

"The test of whether we are living as fully as possible is whether we would be happy to live our lives over again."

"The monastery is not an escape from the world; it is a place to learn how to love the world properly."

"We are not called to be successful, but to be faithful."

"The things we worry about are the things we have not yet surrendered to God."