Thomas Merton Quotes

I'll never be immune to criticism, and that's okay, and I'm very comfortable with that.

I'm not arrogant enough to look back on my career and criticize my choices. It's really not my place.

Redemption is not perfection. The redeemed must realize their imperfections.

I'm generally a very happy guy because I'm doing what I want. I'm willing to tell you that there are people who are much better than I am in writing. I don't have to be the fastest gun in the West.

I don't take myself too seriously, as I think I used to years ago, when I was younger.

I just try to be the player I am.

One that does not think to highly of himself is more than he thinks.

Self knowledge puts us on our knees, and it is very necessary for love. For knowledge of God gives love, and knowledge of self gives humility

I make mistakes every day. I'm not perfect in my behavior, but I want to be and that's what God is after, a heart that wants to be.

Self-assurance is contemptible and fatal unless it is self-knowledge.

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my faults.

Commandment #1: Believe in yourself. Commandment #2: Get over yourself.

May Allah show mercy upon the man who shows me my faults.

Maybe at the same time as I'm more confident today, I'm also more humble.

I made as many mistakes as anybody else. I sound as if I'm an egomaniac, and I suppose in some ways I'm filled with hubris because I know how good I am at certain things. But other things, I can't do at all. I can't draw.

May Allah have mercy on him who sends me my faults as a present.

Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world. Yet from this lesson thou will learn to avoid the frog's foolish ambition of swelling to rival the bigness of the ox.

You do not need to be different from who you are. You only need to be more of the person you already are.

I saw that we're all doing the best we can. This is how a lifetime of humility begins.

I don't put myself above anyone, and I have as many shortcomings as any non-believer. I just choose to turn to a higher power to help me gain wisdom and, I hope, improve over time.

I deplore my shortcomings, but plan to keep them.

A man should be able to hear, and to bear, the worst that could be said of him.

...when people already know they're deficient, they have nothing to lose by trying.

If we pretend to have reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves and our work. God's work only may express that, but ours may never have that sentence written upon it, Behold it was very good.

The Christian with depth is the person who has failed and who has learned to live with it.