Thomas Merton Quotes

It would be nice to turn off that incessant churning of consciousness.

The world intrudes in my brain daily. Since my brain is dripping with all kinds of stuff that's out there in the world, that I can't seem to be able to shut out, it has to end up being in my work as well.

The mind can be but full. It will be as much filled with a small disagreeable occurrence, having no other, as with a large one.

The darkness, the loop of negative thoughts on repeat, clamours and interferes with the music I hear in my head.

We are too connected. There's noise in our heads all the time.

Worry divides the mind.

There’s a massive glitter ball in my head and it has never stopped turning

The constant nagging in your mind of undone things pulls you out of the present--tethers you to a mind-set of the future so that you're never fully in the moment and enjoying what's now.

You know, in the case of most of us, the mind is noisy, everlastingly chattering to itself, soliloquizing or chattering about something, or trying to talk to itself, to convince itself of something; it is always moving, noisy.

The always-connected culture isn't as much a contributor as Grace might think. The nervous mind, the monkey mind, will create its own noise. It doesn't need a new toy.

Static in my head, the reflected sound of everything, tried to go to where it led, but it didn't lead to anything.

The indolent mind is not empty, but full of vermin.

The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principle subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied.

Just as I sit down to meditate, all the vilest subjects in the world come up. The whole thing is nauseating. Why should the mind think thoughts I do not want it to think? I am as it were a slave to the mind.

The more mind is filled with chattering, more sex has appeal.

The only reason your mind won't stop its endless chattering is because you won't stop listening to it!

An improper mind is a perpetual feast.

My mind is always racing with ideas or things I should be doing.

Her mind is an unquiet one, words and thoughts and impulses constantly crashing into each other.

It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head.

But there was not a moment when she did not see Carol in her mind, and all she saw, she seemed to see through Carol. That evening, the dark flat streets of New York, the tomorrow of work, the milk bottle dropped and broken in her sink, became unimportant. She flung herself on her bed and drew a line with a pencil on a piece of paper. And another line, carefully, and another. A world was born around her, like a bright forest with a million shimmering leaves.

You're using your headphones to drown out your mind

Her mind was an hotel where facts came and went like transient lodgers, without leaving their address behind, and frequently without paying for their board.

My mind wanders a lot, but fortunately it's too weak to go very far.

Everyone nowadays lives through too much and thinks through too little: they have a ravenous appetite and colic at the same time so that they keep getting thinner and thinner no matter how much they eat.--Whoever says nowadays, "I have not experienced anything"--is a simpleton.