Thomas Merton

"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image."

"Perhaps I am stronger than I think."

"Solitude is not found so much by going to the desert as by going into one's depths."

"The contemplative life is no escape from the world and its responsibilities. It is the fulfillment of them."

"What we have to be is what we are."

"Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul."

"Peace is not something you wish for; it's something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give."

"Learning to love is learning to let go."

"If you want to identify me, ask 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."

"The cloister is not an escape from the world; it is the heart of the world."

"A human being is not a thing or a substance to be defined by way of predicates or what it is that he is. Rather, a human being is free to be whatever he intends to be."

"We are not living in a world of objects which we collect and do things to."

"Silence is not an absence of sound. It is a presence of peace."

"The living God is not a dictator who threatens people into obedience."

"Do not seek God as though he were lost, but seek him within yourself as though you were lost."

"The way to become holy is not to stop living but to begin living in a new way."

"True freedom is not the ability to do whatever we want, but the ability to become who we are meant to be."

"We need to learn to want what we have, not kill ourselves trying to get what we want."

"What is the good of my having come to the world if I am not going to do anything to leave it better than I found it?"

"The shadow of suffering and death are upon our civilization. But Christ is risen."

"Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is the ultimate meaning of everything around us."

"A word that is true honors the reality it attempts to describe. A word that is false distorts that reality."

"If you want peace, work for justice."

"There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making it a luxury instead of a profound human necessity."

"No man is an island entire of itself."

"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, we feel the community of our race."

"The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable."

"True peace is found when a man accepts his individual solitude and his limitations."

"What a strange thing it is to be alive beneath cherry trees."

"Nature is not a place to visit. It is a home."