Thomas Merton Quotes

Love is so much bigger than our ignorance.

I've spent quite a bit of my life as a meditation teacher and writer commending the strengths of love and compassion.

I like to think that I'm trying to choose love over most things, but that's my choice.

My mother is not a model. She is not perfect. That awareness is part of learning to love someone. Predicting the actions of someone is an act of love. We persist, even when we get it wrong. That's the beauty of love.

It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who He is, and who we are.

It would be great if people never got angry at someone for doing something they've done themselves.

If I could have one wish, it would be for people to look at one another with open hearts and minds. Most of all, to look at each other with compassion. No matter who they are.

Art is not necessary at all. All that is necessary to make this world a better place to live in is to love - to love as Christ loved, as Buddha loved.

Why does God endow us with compassion?

This sounds really cheesy and weird, but the pitbull is a sweet animal that just wants love until it's provoked - that's kind of how I've lived my life, too.

When you are suffering, you become more understanding about yourself, but also about other people's sufferings too. That's the first step to understand somebody is to understand their sufferings. So then love follows.

The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

All we will ever know and share about love, humility, compassion, and sacrifice - the secrets that will reveal and then resolve old sorrows - awaits us within ourselves.

I fall in love with contradictions without understanding. I can't really portray them unless I do. So in a roundabout way I have to fall in love, it's my duty. If love is about understanding and understanding is compassion and compassion is love, I have to have compassion towards the world.

We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love.

The solution for mankind is of a spiritual nature. It is not a political or religious solution. It's the ability to love each other. That's the only solution I see.

Compassion is the key to living outside the confines of your lower self.

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.

One of the greatest indicators of our own spiritual maturity is revealed in how we respond to the weaknesses, the inexperience, and the potentially offensive actions of others.

People who truly love us can be divided into two categories: those who understand us, and those who forgive us our worst sins. Rarely do you find someone capable of both.

Compassion brings us to a stop, and for a moment we rise above ourselves.

We may fight against what is wrong, but if we allow ourselves to hate, that is to insure our spiritual defeat and our likeness to what we hate.

Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third.

I consider all drama to be the opportunity to see the world from another person's point of view. That seems to be the point of drama, really. And thereby to encourage understanding and even love.