Thomas Merton Quotes

You are not your body; you are not your brain, not even your mind. You are Spirit. All you have to do is reawaken to the memory, to remember.

I came to believe that my true identity goes beyond the outer roles I play. It transcends the ego. I came to understand that there is an Authentic 'I' within - an 'I Am,' or divine spark within the soul.

The greatest error of a man is to think that he is weak by nature, evil by nature. Every man is divine and strong in his real nature. What are weak and evil are his habits, his desires and thoughts, but not himself.

We're all looking for love, in our confusion, until we find our way back to the realization that love is what we already are.

Meditation will drop all the masks. It is a search for the original face.

Our identification with the mind and body is the chief reason for our failure to know our self as we truly are.

Realize your true nature. That is all there is to do. Know yourself as you are - infinite Spirit. That is practical religion. Everything else is impractical, for everything else will perish.

If you can find the God inside yourself, you can find the God inside everybody.

Oh, if only you knew yourselves! You are souls; you are Gods. If ever I feel like blaspheming, it is when I call you man.

Whatever be the means adopted, you must at last return to the Self, so why not abide as the Self here and now?

There is a divinity within our breast.

Maybe the tragedy of the human race was that we had forgotten that we are each divine.

Do not be surprised if I adore as God what you called humanity, since you talked of humanity as if it was empty of spirit and you think in the flesh according to the flesh.

To find a Buddha all you have to do is see your nature.

In one word, this ideal is that you are divine.

To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.

There is a god within us.

Unraveling external selves and coming home to our real identity is the true meaning of soul work.

You have been called to be who you are - the whole luminous light. No one can dim your light when you are fully present to the depth and breadth of it.

The authentic self is the soul made visible.

Your nature is the Buddha.

We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself.

To know what that true self is without social pressure is to know your true nature.

It is the nature of the self to manifest itself, In every atom slumbers the might of the self.

I think that we all carry the divine within us.