Thomas Merton Quotes

The moral state of society was most terrible. We stole from ourselves, took and gave bribes, lied in the reports, in newspapers, from high podiums. And all of this from top to bottom; from bottom to top.

So much perfection argues rottenness somewhere.

As creeping ivy clings to wood or stone, And hides the ruin that it feeds upon, So sophistry, cleaves close to, and protects Sin's rotten trunk, concealing its defects.

Oh, what a vileness human beauty is; corroding, corrupting everything it touches.

I have no faith in much organized religion because I think it's by a bunch of hypocrites and practiced by a bunch of hypocrites. They don't mean what they say because all of them are in the slave trade one way or the other.

Never does sin so reign in the Church or State, as when it has gained reputation,or, at least, is no disgrace to the sinner,nor is a matter od offence to we who behold it.

Man is a degeneration of what he was.

At this time of year it's easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity - the lies, the corruption, the abuse.

The nation's morals are like its teeth: the more decayed they are the more it hurts to touch them.

Adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools, you got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules. When you gonna wake up?

Shun, as you would the plague, a cleric who from being poor has become wealthy, or who, from being nobody has become a celebrity.

Of all things in the world that stink in the nostrils of men, hypocrisy is the worst.

There are too many who reverse both the principles and the practice of the Apostles; they become all things to all men, not to serve others, but themselves; and they try all things only to hold fast that which is bad.

I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession of a Benedictine abbot: "My vow of poverty has given me a hundred thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince." - I forget the consequences of his vow of chastity.

[Richard M. Nixon was] a foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad.

As Angelo discovered in Measure for Measure, nothing corrupts like virtue.

We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought.

There will he nothing more that posterity can add to our immoral habits; our descendants must have the same desires and act the same follies as their sires. Every vice has reached its zenith.

Were the life of man prolonged, he would become such a proficient in villainy, that it would become necessary again to drown or to burn the world. Earth would become an hell; for future rewards when put off to a great distance, would cease to encourage, and future punishments to alarm.

If there's anything to learn from the history of movies, it's that corruption leads to further corruption, not to innocence.

Absolute welfare corrupts absolutely.

What a moron I was to think you were sweet and innocent, when it turns out you were actually college-educated the whole time!

You start out with the sublime and you end up in an alley jerking away for dear life.

Royalty is the gold filling in a mouthful of decay