Thomas Merton Quotes

There will be days when you feel defeated, exhausted, and plain old beat-up by life's whiplash. People you love will disappoint you - and you will disappoint them. You'll probably struggle with some kind of mortal appetite. Some days it will feel as though the veil between Heaven and Earth is made of reinforced concrete.

There is nothing noble about suffering except the love and forgiveness with which we meet it. Many believe that if they are suffering they are closer to God, but I have met very few who could keep their heart open to their suffering enough for that to be true. (124)

It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.\

God's way of answering the Christian's prayer for more patience, experience, hope and love often is to put him into the furnace of affliction.

Some people who suffer run away from God, and I know the tendency, but instead I just run to Him.

Sure as I am breathing, sure as I'm sad I'll keep this wisdom in my flesh I leave here believing more than I had This love has got no ceiling

There are many trials in life which do not seem to come from unwisdom or folly; they are silver arrows shot from the bow of God, and fixed inextricably in the quivering heart - they are meant to be borne - they were not meant, like snow or water, to melt as soon as they strike; but the moment an ill can be patiently borne it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.

Pain is a byproduct of life. That’s the truth. Life sometimes sucks. That’s true for everyone. But if you don’t face the pain and the suck, you don’t ever get the other things either. Laughter. Joy. Love. Pain passes, but those things are worth fighting for. Worth dying for.

Now, I wish to encourage those who are in the midst of hard trials, who feel their faith may be fading under the onslaught of troubles. There seems to me no better answer to the question of why trials come and what we are to do than the words of the Lord Himself, who passed through trials for us more terrible than we can imagine.

For our hearts are enfeebled by prosperity, so that we cannot make the effort to pray.

Faith is not to get you out of a hard place but to change your heart in the hard place.

Real faith is refined in the fires and storms of pain.

I am certain that I never did grow in grace one-half so much anywhere as I have upon the bed of pain.

Trials make the promise sweet, Trials give new life to prayer; Trials bring me to His feet, Lay me low, and keep me there.

The heart must be beaten or bruised, and then the sweet scent will come out.

Pain is the doorway to wisdom and to truth.

Sometimes the most difficult, horrific things can be the greatest spiritual teachers.

Spiritual direction is an interpersonal relationship in which we learn how to grow, live, and love in the spiritual life.

The Divine wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means whereby to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means whereby we learn to do without them; not as a means whereby we escape evil, but as a means whereby we become strong to meet it.

He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea.

The Lord gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.

Anything that I undergo, I look at as redemptive suffering.

I read God's word when I am not suffering. And then I don't have to all of a sudden establish this habit when I am hurting.

Sometimes it looks like God's abandoned you, but not for any reason. To make your faith grow and to see that, no matter what happens, you come out OK... It's all for your good. It's all for love, and it's all for making you a strong person.

Listen to 100 of my sermons, and 80 or 90 of them will be about overcoming our struggles and the lessons God teaches us in valleys he allows us to enter.