Thomas Merton
1915-1968 • American
Christian MysticismZen
Trappist monk, writer, and mystic. His autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain sparked renewed interest in contemplative Christianity.
Key Works
- The Seven Storey Mountain
- New Seeds of Contemplation
- Journals
115
quotes in library
Quotes by Thomas Merton
115 quotes“True solitude opens you to the whole world.”
solitudeThoughts in Solitude
“Love is the revelation of our deepest personal meaning, value, and identity.”
loveLove and Living
“But love can only be revealed in love.”
loveLove and Living
“You do not love by yourself. You love only because love loves itself in you.”
loveLove and Living
“You cannot tell me who I am, and I cannot tell you who you are.”
identityNew Seeds of Contemplation
“If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you?”
identityNew Seeds of Contemplation
“Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are.”
identityNew Seeds of Contemplation
“That is something you yourself can only discover from within.”
identityNew Seeds of Contemplation
“The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion.”
communicationThe Asian Journal
“Communion is wordless. It is beyond words. It is beyond speech. It is beyond concept.”
communionThe Asian Journal
“Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity.”
unityThe Asian Journal
“My dear brothers and sisters, we are already one. But we imagine that we are not.”
oneThe Asian Journal
“What we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.”
recoveryThe Asian Journal
“You will never find interior solitude unless you make some conscious effort.”
solitudeNew Seeds of Contemplation
“You will never gain peace if you give yourself a hundred ways to be busy.”
peaceNew Seeds of Contemplation
“Or, more simply, prayer is awareness of God.”
prayerThoughts in Solitude
“The way you prepare for contemplation is to give up everything that is not contemplation.”
contemplationNew Seeds of Contemplation
“Contemplation is the highest expression of intellectual and spiritual life.”
contemplationNew Seeds of Contemplation
“The self is not something we find, it is something we create.”
awakeningNew Seeds of Contemplation
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