Quotes from Thomas Merton

It would be a sin to place any limit upon our hope in God. We must love Him without measure. All sin is rooted in the failure of love. All sin is a withdrawal of love from God, in order to love something else.

the hypostatic union, or the union of the divine and human natures in the One Person of the Word, the God-Man, Jesus Christ, was not only a truth of the greatest, most revolutionary, and most existential actuality, but it was the central truth of all being and all history.

Above all, enter into the Church's liturgy and make the liturgical cycle part of your life—let its rhythm work its way into your body and soul.

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

If I do His will as a free act of homage and adoration paid to a wisdom that I cannot see, His will itself becomes the life and substance and reality of my worship/ But if I do His will as a perfunctory adjustment of my own will to the unavoidable, my worship is hollow and without heart.

Let there always be quiet, dark churches in which men can take refuge.

While some men see ordinary happenings, others see divine light and guidance.

Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism.

To praise the contemplative life is not to reject every other form of life, but to seek a solid foundation for every other human striving. Without

Above all things have charity, which is the bond of perfection and may the peace of Christ exult in your hearts in which you are called unto one Body. And be grateful.? It seems to me that all mystical theology is contained in those two lines.

If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.

Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers, and rewarded according to their capacity.