Thomas Merton Quotes

Wisdom teaches us that none but birds should go out early, and that not even birds should do it unless they are out of worms.

It's always night, or we wouldn't need light.

Seeing the Way is like going into a dark room with a torch; the darkness instantly departs, while the light alone remains. When the Way is attained and the truth is seen, ignorance vanishes and enlightenment abides forever.

Man's life seems to me like a long, weary night that would be intolerable if there were not occasionally flashes of light, the sudden brightness of which is so comforting and wonderful, that the moments of their appearance cancel out and justify the years of darkness.

The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

There is neither Past nor Future. There is only the Present.

We know one another. This is the present. There is no past and no future. Here I am washing my hands, and the cracked mirror shows me to myself, suspended as it were, in time; this is me, this moment will not pass.

Every moment of the night Forever changing places And they put out the star-light With the breath from their pale faces

The timelessness of art is its capacity to represent the transformation of endless becoming into being.

Pressed, I would define spirituality as the shadow of light humanity casts as it moves through the darkness of everything that can be explained.

Alas! What is man? Whether he be deprived of that light which is from on high, of whether he discard it, a frail and trembling creature; standing on time, that bleak and narrow isthmus between two eternities, he sees nothing but impenetrable darkness on the one hand, and doubt, distrust, and conjecture, still more perplexing, on the other. Most gladly would he take an observation, as to whence he has come, or whither he is going; alas, he has not the means: his telescope is too dim, his compass too wavering, his plummet too short.

I’ve never been in those places where I’ve never been and never will be, I have no share in the infinity of light-years and dark-years, but the darkness is mine, and the light, and my time is my own.

There is no doubt that truth is to falsehood as light is to darkness; and so excellent a thing is truth that even when it touches humble and lowly matters, it still incomparably exceeds the uncertainty and falsehood in which great and elevated discourses are clothed; because even if falsehood be the fifth element of our minds, notwithstanding this, truth is the supreme nourishment of the higher intellects.

Not even nothingness preceded life. Nothingness owes its very idea to existence.

They had no past. They had no future. They just were.

However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

First, never go against the best light you have; second, take care that your light be not darkness.

You can't discover light, by analyzing the dark.

The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed.

For the ones who are called saints by human opinion on earth may very well be devils, and their light may very well be darkness

There is no before. There is only now, and what comes next.

Yes, well, life is a folly. If you live long enough, nothing is surprising.

Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence.

Right awareness is awareness of one's own being in its totality: all that is good and all that is bad. But as you become aware, the bad starts disappearing - just as when you bring light into the room, the darkness disappears. When light is in the room, darkness cannot exist there. Sin is darkness, forgetfulness, unconsciousness.