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"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."
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"Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny."

"It's the smell of him in the bathroom, all I need to get ready for the day. Watching him get dressed, and the sound in the kitchen; a slow hum of a song and his movements, picking things to eat. The way I could observe him, for hours, just go on with his day " or as he sleeps " simply breathing in and out, in and out, and it's like the hymn that sings me to peace. I know the world is still out there and I know I'm not yet friendly to its pace, but as long as I know him with me, here, there, somewhere " us " I know I have a chance."

"The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it. The long life seemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, the clammy breaths, fumbling, seemed to have triumphed. .."

"The fastest way to end an argument with your wife is to admit she's right."

"Peace is not the absence of chaos. It is the presence of tranquility and joy in the midst of chaos."

"The quieter the mind the louder the soul."

"The saddest day in the woods is when birds run out of happy songs to sing."

"Raise your love so high that anger cannot reach it."
Explore more quotes by Thomas Merton


"I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not ask of me."


"To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us - and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference."


"First of all, although men have a common destiny, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself in fear and trembling. We can help one another to find the meaning of life no doubt. But in the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. You cannot tell me who I am and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you?"


"The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both."


"I was not sure where I was going, and I could not see what I would do when I got [there]. But you saw further and clearer than I, and you opened the seas before my ship, whose track led me across the waters to a place I had never dreamed of, and which you were even then preparing to be my rescue and my shelter and my home."


"The ever-changing reality in the midst of which we live should awaken us to the possibility of an uninterrupted dialogue with God. By this I do not mean continuous "talk, or a frivolously conversational form of affective prayer which is sometimes cultivated in convents, but a dialogue of love and of choice. A dialogue of deep wills."


"Be still:There is no longer any need of comment.It was a lucky windThat blew away his halo with his cares,A lucky sea that drowned his reputation."


"Contemplation means rest, suspension of activity, withdrawal into the mysterious interior solitude in which the soul is absorbed in the immense and fruitful silence of God and learns something of the secret of His perfections less by seeing than by fruitive love."
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