Thomas Merton Quotes

I'm interested in taking hold of the dull truth narrative and finding inside it the transcendence and spirituality and hysteria normally associated with religion.

Go beyond science, into the region of metaphysics. Real religion is beyond argument. It can only be lived both inwardly and outwardly.

When a religion becomes organized it is no longer a religious experience but only superstition and estrangement.

Everybody has their thing that they're truthful about. My thing is just a love of God... so that's what I'm going to do.

Sufism is not a religion or a philosophy, it is neither deism nor atheism, nor is it a moral, nor a special kind of mysticism, being free from the usual religious sectarianism. If ever it could be called a religion, it would only be as a religion of love, harmony, and beauty.

Love is the essence of all religion, mysticism, and philosophy, and for the one who has learned this, love fulfills the purpose of religion, ethics, and philosophy, and the lover is raised above all diversities of faiths and beliefs.

Primarily I am a passionately religious man, and my novels must be written from the depth of my religious experience.

The real truth, I thought, in terms of what faith is and what Christianity is.

I was maybe 5 or 6, and my grandmother would begin sitting me in the Quaker meeting house. I asked my grandmother, 'What am I supposed to do?' and she said, 'Just wait, we're going inside to greet the light.' I liked that—this idea to go inside to find that light within, literally as well as figuratively.

The business and method of mysticism is love.

Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in molding life than nationalism or a common language.

Faith is never identical with piety.

You can't write about the past and ignore religion. It was such a fundamental, mind-shaping, driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested in what religion does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatred and violence.

For me, it is essential to have the inner peace and serenity of prayer in order to listen to the silence of God, which speaks to us, in our personal life and the history of our times, of the power of love.

The secular world is more spiritual than it thinks, just as the ecclesiastical world is more materialist than it cares to acknowledge.

I could not work with a girl who did not have a spiritual quality.

I believe in God, family, truth between people, the power of love.

I'm not involved in the politics of religion, but I love what the message is.

I would say that, intellectually, Catholicism had no more impact on me than did social theory.

God comes first - if I don't love him, I can't love anybody, and if I can't love me I can't love nobody.

I think there's been a big problem between religion, or organized religion, and spirituality.

I love being a scientologist, as it's helped me in every single aspect of my life.

I would say I have a complicated relationship with institutionalized religion.

People are drawn to the spiritual. It has a universal appeal.

God save us from religion.