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.

Francis of Assisi on 31st Street. Merton began routinely praying but discontinued the practice after leaving the school. During his initial months of schooling Merton begged his father to remove him.

O. T. Merton was a keen proponent of interfaith understanding.