Thomas Merton
Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by force from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves.Collection: Our World
When we are strong, we are always much greater than the things that happen to us.Collection: Strength
Each one of us has some kind of vocation. We are all called by God to share in His life and in His Kingdom. Each one of us is called to a special place in the Kingdom. If we find that place we will be happy. If we do not find it, we can never be completely happy. For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be.Collection: Destiny
Every man becomes the image of the God he adores. He whose worship is directed to a dead thing becomes dead. He who loves corruption rots. He who loves a shadow becomes, himself, a shadow. He who loves things that must perish lives in dread of their perishing.Collection: Men
The only way to make a man worthy of love is by loving him.Collection: Love Is
If a writer is so cautious that he never writes anything that cannot be criticized, he will never be able to write anything that can be read. If you want to help other people you have got to make up your mind to write things that some men will condemn.Collection: Freedom
Humility is a virtue, not a neurosis.Collection: Christian
We cannot possess the truth fully until it has entered into the very substance of our life by good habits, and by a certain perfection of moral activity.Collection: Perfection
We too often forget that faith is a matter of questioning and struggle before it becomes one of certitude and peace. You have to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after you have begun to believe, your faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of forgone conclusions. Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge from him, flying to comfortable social forms and safe convictions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture.Collection: Faith
The Holy Spirit is the most perfect gift of the Father to men, and yet He is the one gift which the Father gives most easily.Collection: Wisdom
Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity.Collection: Spiritual
Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true.Collection: Nice