Thomas Merton Quotes

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.

Beware, so long as you live, of judging men by their outward appearance.

Within every man and woman a secret is hidden, and as a photographer it is my task to reveal it if I can.

You cannot judge by outward appearances; the soul is only transparent to its Maker.

Give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward may be one.

I, too, find the flower beautiful in its outward appearance. But a deeper beauty lies concealed within.

There is more that meets the eye, I see the soul that is inside.

Everyday we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read the lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Everyman, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths.

You wander from room to room Hunting for the diamond necklace That is already around your neck!

To be great, be whole; Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you. Be whole in everything. Put all you are Into the smallest thing you do. So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendor Because it blooms up above.

Without an uninvestigated story, there's only the perfection of life appearing as itself. You can always go inside and find the beauty that's revealed after the pain and fear are understood.

Pleasure to me is wonder—the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability. To trace the remote in the immediate; the eternal in the ephemeral; the past in the present; the infinite in the finite; these are to me the springs of delight and beauty.

Creatures, like pictures, are fairest at a certain distance, but it is not so with Christ; the nearer the soul approaches Him, and the longer it lives in the enjoyhment of Him, still the sweeter and more desirable He becomes.

My shining dishonesty will be the salvation of me.

If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

It's true. It's like the hidden secret that no one tells you. we can all be beautiful girls, Colie. it's so easy. it's like Dorothy clicking her heels to go home. You could do it all along.

Better to be strong than pretty and useless.

When we seek for connection, we restore the world to wholeness. Our seemingly separate lives become meaningful as we discover how truly necessary we are to each other.

Being young and trying to catch a glimpse of the depths, of the true self, of the soul, or whatever human beings have called it over the centuries, we often find ourselves surrounded by bossy, hectoring voices trying to short-circuit our personal experience by super-imposing their own disappointments. Much of this bossiness masquerades as an education.

Which of us is other than a secret to all but God!

You can run for cover, you can run for help. You can run to your lover, but you can't ever run from yourself.

The greatness of our God lies in the fact that [He] is both tough minded and tender hearted.

It is our will That thus enchains us to permitted ill. We might be otherwise, we might be all We dream of happy, high, majestical. Where is the love, beauty and truth we seek, But in our mind? and if we were not weak, Should we be less in deed than in desire?

Each star is a mirror reflecting the truth inside you.

Whatever we refuse to recognize about ourselves has a way of rearing its head and making itself known when we least expect it.