Thomas Merton Quotes

Try to figure out who you really are and not who you want other people to think you are.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

And the idea of ourselves is our escape from the fact what we really are.

The secret is to have a sense of yourself, your real self, your unique self. And not just once in a while, or once a day, but all through the day, the week and life.

Don't get confused with what people say you are, with who you know you are.

That's the way I feel, at least: like there's a real me and a reflection of me, and I have no way of telling which is which.

You know it's real when you are who you think you are

Before we can realize who we really are, we must become conscious of the fact that the person we think we are, here and now, is at best an impostor and a stranger.

But which was the real me? Let me be perfectly honest: I was a man of many faces. (p.33)

Ego is to the true self what a flashlight is to a spotlight.

All my work is not personal - I've been trying to get away from that into the true self underneath all the tastes and things we think make up a self.

When you look in the mirror what do you see? Do you see the real you, or what you have been conditioned to believe is you?

And identity is funny being yourself is funny as you are never yourself to yourself except as you remember yourself and then of course you do not believe yourself.

No matter where you go, you are what you are playa.

The real self is who you are when you're at home, when you're comfortable, and the false self is what you're pretending - and the reason you pretend is because you want to create a character for the surroundings you're within.

A person never knows their own true face. Everybody thinks that the phoney, posed social mask they wear is their real face.

I have realized that my real self is a greater entity than any possible post or title.

Although our package of skin and bones looks very convincing, it is a mask, an illusion, disguising our true self, which has no limitations.

But when I call for a hero, out comes my lazy old self; so I never know who I am, nor how many I am or will be. I'd love to be able to touch a bell and summon the real me, because if I really need myself, I mustn't disappear.

The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.

There is a voice inside which speaks and says, "This is the real me!"

I'd reached a point where there was a direct conflict between what I was trying to be and who I really was.

I think I am one of those who can manage not to take on a completely different appearance under their own glance.

I don't know what else I would be if I wasn't me. I am not looking from the outside, looking back. I am who I am.

Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.