Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life. – Thomas Merton
Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how. – Thomas Merton
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. – Thomas Merton
Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another. – Thomas Merton
By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet. – Thomas Merton
We become contemplatives when God discovers Himself in us. – Thomas Merton
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
[W]hen the faculties are empty, then your whole being listens. – Thomas Merton
