Thomas Merton

When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. You take your time, you do your work well. ↗

— Thomas Merton

#work #apocalypse

Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God. ↗

— Thomas Merton

#life

Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm. ↗

— Thomas Merton

#music #silence #inspirational

The greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer us great evils masking as the greatest goods. ↗

— Thomas Merton

#temptation #vices #temptation

We do not want to be beginners [at prayer]. but let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything but beginners, all our life! ↗

— Thomas Merton

#life

Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone. ↗

— Thomas Merton

#love

The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty. Ghandi, quoted in Merton, p. 68 ↗

— Thomas Merton

#liberty #freedom

Jesus lived and died in vain if He did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal law of love. Gandhi, quoted in Merton, p. 38 ↗

— Thomas Merton

#love #life

The deepest of level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless ... beyond speech ... beyond concept. ↗

— Thomas Merton

#integration #unity #communication

The real reason why so few men believe in God is that they have ceased to believe that even a God can love them. ↗

— Thomas Merton

#skepticism #love