Thomas Merton Quotes

Purity and simplicity are the two wings with which man soars above the earth and all temporary nature.

First and foremost, the monk should own nothing in this world, but he should have as his possessions solitude of the body, modesty of bearing, a modulated tone of voice, and a well-ordered manner of speech. He should be without anxiety as to his food and drink, and should eat in silence.

Life is simple unless we find a way to make it complicated.

Buddha says: Life should be simple, not complex. Life should be based on needs, not on desires. Needs are perfectly okay: you need food, you need clothes, you need a shelter, you need love, you need relationship. Perfectly good, nothing wrong in it. Needs can be fulfilled; desires are basically unfulfillable. Desires create complexity. They create complexity because they can never be fulfilled. You go on and on working hard for them, and they remain unfulfilled, and you remain empty.

From innumerable complexities we must grow to simplicity; we must become simple in our inward life and in our outward needs.

If your life is rushing in many directions at once, you are incapable of the kind of deep, unhurried prayer that is vital to the Christian walk.

Do you want to be happy? Then make your life as soulfully simple As sleeplessly breathing.

There is no need to get to a place of prayer; pray wherever you are.

Always, the eye sees more than the mind can comprehend, and we go through life self-blinded to much that lies before us. We want a simple world, but we live in a magnificently complex one, and rather than open ourselves to it, we perceive the world through filters that make it less daunting.

It takes waking prayer and working prayer and going to bed in prayer each day with increasing dedication. I must be the best person that I am able to be when I am painting. Tonight the wind is howling and the barrels are full of sky water.

To pray well is the better half of study.

If God doesn't want something for me, I shouldn't want it either. Spending time in meditative prayer, getting to know God, helps align my desires with God's.

The components of happiness are quite simple. Happiness is gentleness, peace, concentration, simplicity, forgiveness, humor, fearlessness, trust, and now. In its true form each quality includes all the rest, for happiness is whole, and one feels whole when genuinely happy.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

IN THE BEGINNING I undertook my walking not only to contact people, I undertook it as a prayer discipline to keep me concentrated on my prayer for peace... After the first few years the prayer discipline was completely unnecessary, because I had learned to pray without ceasing. I made the contact so thoroughly that into my prayer consciousness I put any condition or person in the world I am concerned about and the rest takes place automatically.

I pray daily, not for more riches, but for more wisdom with which to recognize, embrace and enjoy what I already possess.

After a while, you have to be at peace with the fact that you simple are

The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.

Enjoy everything. Need nothing.

With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bent arm for a pillow - I have still joy in the midst of all these things.

We would all like to be able to live an uncluttered life, a simple life, a good life.

You must go in quest of yourself, and you will find yourself again only in the simple and forgotten things.

There are some people who think that they should be always mourning, that they should put a continual constraint upon themselves, and feel a disgust for those amusements to which they are obliged to submit. For my own part, I confess that I know not how to conform myself to these rigid notions. I prefer something more simple, which I also think would be more pleasing to God.

I wanted just for people to know that, no matter how simple your life is, if you have millions or you don't have anything, you can be happy where you are.

The sage seeks freedom from desire. He does not collect precious things. He learns not to hold on to ideas. He brings men back to what they have lost.