Thomas Merton Quotes

I needed to be in the bush. There I find solitude and beauty and purity and focus. That's where my heart lies.

Nature brings us back to absolute truth whenever we wander.

Quality of life is not only about what you find in the shops; it's about the landscape.

For truth has such a face and such a mien, as to be loved needs only to be seen.

I don't make things complicated, that's the way they get all by themselves.

Just living is not enough... one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.

Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.

Earth laughs in flowers.

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.

If you get simple beauty and naught else, you get about the best thing God invents.

Nature admits no lie.

There's something about the expanse of nature that forces you to think clearly.

A dead hydrangea is as intricate and lovely as one in bloom. Bleak sky is as seductive as sunshine, miniature orange trees without blossom or fruit are not defective; they are that.

Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless? To long for the moon while looking on the rain, to lower the blinds and be unaware of the passing of the spring - these are even more deeply moving. Branches about to blossom or gardens strewn with flowers are worthier of our admiration.

I would I were alive again To kiss the fingers of the rain, To drink into my eyes the shine Of every slanting silver line, To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze From drenched and dripping apple-trees. For soon the shower will be done, And then the broad face of the sun Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth Until the world with answering mirth Shakes joyously, and each round drop Rolls twinkling, from its grass-blade top.

I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.

The music was as much a gift as sunshine, as rain, as any blessing ever prayed for.

Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond.

'Ever seen a leaf - a leaf from a tree?' 'Yes.' I saw one recently - a yellow one, a little green, wilted at the edges. Blown by the wind. When I was a little boy, I used to shut my eyes in winter and imagine a green leaf, with veins on it, and the sun shining ...' 'What's this - an allegory?' "No; why? Not an allegory - a leaf, just a leaf. A leaf is good. Everything's good.'

After the rains departed the skies and settled on earth - clear skies; moist brilliant earth - greater clarity returned to life alone with the blue above and made the world below rejoice with the freshness of the recent rain. It left heaven in our souls and a freshness in our hearts.

Nature tells every secret once.

We can get so wrapped up in our own misconceptions that we miss the simple beauty of the truth.

Nature is goodness crystallized.

I have sat here happy in the gardens, Watching the still pool and the reeds And the dark clouds. . . . But though I greatly delight In these and the water lilies, That which sets me nighest to weeping Is the rose and white colour of the smooth flag-stones, And the pale yellow grasses Among them.