Thomas Merton Quotes

I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain.

The burden of happiness can only be relieved by the balm of suffering.

A minute to smile and an hour to weep in, A pint of joy to a peck of trouble, And never a laugh but the moans come double; And that is life!

Bear patiently, my heart, for you have suffered heavier things.

Stunned and still not suffering. Swollen with care and anxiety and still not suffering. Useless, old and full of grief, but still not suffering.

This is one of the great paradoxes of suffering. Those who don't suffer much think suffering should keep people from God, while many who suffer a great deal turn to God, not from him.

There is, though, nothing that prepares us for the worst things in our life. There is nothing you can do to stop the shock, or buffer the pain.

You must remember that no one lives a life free from pain and suffering.

If people knew what Matisse, supposedly the painter of happiness, had gone through, the anguish and tragedy he had to overcome to manage to capture that light which has never left him, if people knew all that, they would also realize that this happiness, this light, this dispassionate wisdom which seems to be mine, are sometimes well-deserved, given the severity of my trials.

Whenever I refused to follow my fate, something very hard to bear would happen in my life.

I don't see life as an opportunity to see how far you can go in the pursuit of pain, although I think I've challenged it a bit.

There has to be pain. That's the rule.

We often cause ourselves suffering by wanting only to live in a world of valleys, a world without struggle and difficulty, a world that is flat, plain, consistent.

There was a time when I had the blues - I mean I really had it bad. I couldn't pay my light bill and I couldn't pay my rent and I really had the blues. But today I can pay my rent and I can pay the light bill and I still got the blues. So I must been born with 'em... That's my religion - the blues is my religion.

Pain is inevitable, suffering is not.

By remembering that I don't know sadness or pain like the people do in the camp and to be sad will not help them.

Life is a tragedy filled with suffering and despair and yet some people do manage to avoid jury duty.

You can't argue with what is.... Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer.

We do not suffer by accident.

We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade.

No human being is immune to adversity or personal setbacks.

Honesty is reached through the doorway of grief and loss.

No great truth bursts upon man without having its hemisphere of darkness and sorrow.

To be weak is miserable, Doing or suffering.

The people say that the two seemed to be removed from human experience; that they had gone through pain and had come out on the other side.