Thomas Merton Quotes

Through the orifice of silence, the whole geyser of Bliss, perpetually shoots up and flows over the soul.

Remember: if you can cease all restless activity, your integral nature will appear.

In its outward manifestation, meditation appears to involve either stopping, by parking the body in a stillness that suspends activity, or giving oneself over to flowing movement. In either case, it is an embodiment of wise attention, an inward gesture undertaken for the most part in silence, a shift from doing to simply being. It is an act that may at first seem artificial but that we soon discover, if we keep at it, is ultimately one of pure love for the life unfolding within us and around us.

The heart beats louder and the soul hears quicker in silence and solitude.

The ideal person is he who, in the midst of the greatest silence and solitude, finds the intensest activity, and in the midst of the intensest activity finds the silence and solitude of the desert.

Beyond all vanities, fights, and desires, omnipotent silence lies.

It is easy to see the glow but hard to recognize the awakening of silence.

But now I have learned to listen to silence. To hear its choirs singing the song of ages, chanting the hymns of space, and disclosing the secrets of eternity.

Let go, and move closer to existence in silence and peace, in meditation.

I love silence.

If your mind is still, you're the happiest.

Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience.

To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.

If the price of peace were a lowering of your consciousness, and the price of stillness a lack of vitality and alertness, then they would not be worth having.

GRINNING, DUCKING MY HEAD FOR BALANCE, I START TO SPIN WILDLY AS I CAN. THAT IS MY FAVORITE DANCE, BECAUSE IT CONTAINS A SECRET. THE FASTER I TWIRL, THE MORE I AM STILL INSIDE. MY DANCE IS ALL MOTION WITHOUT, ALL SILENCE WITHIN. AS MUCH AS I LOVE TO MAKE MUSIC, IT'S THE UNHEARD MUSIC THAT NEVER DIES. AND SILENCE IS MY REAL DANCE, THOUGH IT NEVER MOVES. IT STANDS ASIDE, MY CHOREOGRAPHER OF GRACE, AND BLESSES EACH FINGER AND TOE.

There are times when we stop, we sit still. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.

The true creativity comes out of sitting silently. When you are so totally quiet that there is no thought, no wave in the ocean of your being, out of this silence comes a different kind of creativity.

The silence is so intense that you can hear your own blood roar in your ears but louder than that by far is the mysterious roar which I alwas identify with the roaring of the diamond wisdom, the mysterious roar of silence itself, which is a great Shhhh reminding you of something you've seemed to have forgotten in the stress of your days since birth.

Breath, dreams, silence, invincible calm, you triumph.

A man of meditation functions differently. Whatever profession he chooses, it does not matter. He will bring to his profession some quality of sacredness. He may be making shoes, or he may be cleaning the roads, but he will bring to his work some quality, some grace, some beauty, which is not possible without samādhi.

I have need to busy my heart with quietude.

Stop, stop. Do not speak. The ultimate truth is not even to think.

The appetite for silence is seldom an acquired taste.

Only let the moving waters calm down, and the sun and moon will be reflected on the surface of your being.

The only way to cultivate a quiet mind is by planting seeds of silence.