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.
Thomas Merton

The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.
Thomas Merton

The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error.
Thomas Merton

The least of the work of learning is done in the classroom.
Thomas Merton

The tighter you squeeze, the less you have.
Thomas Merton

The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.
Thomas Merton

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.
Thomas Merton

To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.
Thomas Merton

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.
Thomas Merton

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.
Thomas Merton

We do not exist for ourselves.
Thomas Merton

We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us.
Thomas Merton

We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.
Thomas Merton

We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.
Thomas Merton

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.
Thomas Merton

Wheels of fire, cosmic, rich, full-bodied honest victories over desperation.
Thomas Merton

When ambition ends, happiness begins.
Thomas Merton

Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.
Thomas Merton