“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
Love
“Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.”
DeathAll Quotes by Thomas Merton
“If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.”
History“When ambition ends, happiness begins.”
Happiness“Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how.”
Courage“Perhaps I am stronger than I think.”
Strength“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.”
Happiness“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.”
Alone“Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.”
Peace“October is a fine and dangerous season in America. a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You go to college, and every course in the catalogue looks wonderful.”
Time“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
Art“The least of the work of learning is done in the classroom.”
Learning“We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have - for their usefulness.”
Imagination“Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.”
Death“We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us.”
Time“Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul.”
Inspirational“The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.”
God“Be good, keep your feet dry, your eyes open, your heart at peace and your soul in the joy of Christ.”
Good“Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.”
Good“Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.”
Future“We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.”
God