Thomas Merton Quotes

All my work is not personal - I've been trying to get away from that into the true self underneath all the tastes and things we think make up a self.

I find myself both as man and as myself something more determined and distinctive, at pitch, more distinctive and higher pitched than anything else I see.

For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.

Every rule in the book can be broken, except one - be who you are, and become all you were meant to be.

The greatest discovery in life is self-discovery. Until you find yourself you will always be someone else. Become yourself.

Nobody can teach what is inside a person; it has to be discovered for oneself and a way must be found to express it.

What you are is a question only you can answer.

What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else.

All that I am is me. So I'm not really a poet or a writer or an actor or an activist; I'm me, and these are things that I do.

My interest lies in my self-expression - what's inside of me - not what I'm in.

No matter how widely spread out the films are, how different, you still are you.

People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.

I don't know what else I would be if I wasn't me. I am not looking from the outside, looking back. I am who I am.

The older one gets the more one comes to resemble oneself.

I don't know that you can put a label on growth. I'm just me.

I think my mystery, or any person's mystery, is the thing that makes them most interesting. I try to be as conscious as possible of keeping that alive.

I think that's one of the things that's missing in a lot of people's lives. That's finding out what works for you and doing that.

I just want to find my individuality.

My life is not a sound bite.

I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that ... you really must make the self. It is absolutely useless to look for it, you won't find it, but it's possible in some sense to make it. I don't mean in the sense of making a mask, a Yeatsian mask. But you finally begin in some sense to make and choose the self you want.

It is individuality which is the original and eternal within man; personality doesn't matter so much. To pursue the education and development of this individuality as one's highest vocation would be a divine egoism.

The moving toward one's inner self is a long pilgrimage for a painter. It offers many temporary successes and high points, but impels him on toward the more adequate image.

I shall strip away layer after layer of grime -- the toffee-colored varnish and caked soot left by a lifetime of dissembling -- until I come to the very thing itself and know it for what it is. My soul. My self.

If you're able to be yourself, then you have no competition. All you have to do is get closer and closer to that essence.

The privilege of a lifetime is beingwho you are.The goal of the hero tripdown to the jewel pointis to find those levels in the psychethat open, open, openand finally open to the mystery of your Selfbeing Buddha consciousnessor the Christ.That's the journey.