Thomas Merton Quotes

God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by a process of subtraction.

Attachment to views is the greatest impediment to the spiritual path.

Jesus says if you want to have me, you must give up that other thing that has you.

I can only hold on to the things I want to lose.

The Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.

Do you want to be right more than you want to know the truth? It's the truth that set me free. Acceptance, peace, and less attachment to a world of suffering are all effects of doing The Work. They're not the goals. Do The Work for the love of freedom, for the love of truth.

When we depend on anything smaller than God to provide us with the security, significance, meaning, and value that we long for, God will love us enough to take it away. Much of our anger and bitterness, therefore, is God prying open our hands and taking away something we've held onto more tightly than him.

How seek the way which leadeth to our wishes? By renouncing our wishes. The crown of excellence is renunciation.

It becomes necessary to learn how to clear the mind of all clouds, to free it of all useless ballast and debris by dismissing the burden of too much concern with material things.

How do you let go of attachment to things? Don’t even try. It’s impossible. Attachment to things drops away by itself when you no longer seek to find yourself in them.

In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.

If you endeavor to embrace the Way through much learning, the Way will not be understood. If you observe the Way with simplicity of heart, great indeed is this Way.

To be unattached is not to renounce the world. If you renounce the world you are attached to the world; otherwise why should you renounce it? What is the point in renouncing it if you are not attached to it? Only attachment renounces. If you are really non-attached there is no question of any renunciation.

Never become attached to anything that continues to hurt God. For you to be free of it, God must be allowed to hurt whatever it may be.

If you want resurrection, you must have crucifixion... The hoarder, the one in us that wants to keep, to hold on, must be killed.

Suffering lets us see where are attachments are - and that helps us get free.

Become detached from your ego, become detached from your possessions. Become simply detached from every possible source of attachment.

Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.

We can travel a long way in life and do many things, but our deepest happiness is not born from accumulating new experiences. it is born from letting go of what is unnecessary, and knowing ourselves to be always at home.

When we surrender to God, we let go of our attachment to how things happen on the outside, and we become more concerned with what happens on the inside.

The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.

And what kind of habitation pleases God? What must our natures be like before he can feel at home within us? He asks nothing but a pure heart and a single mind. He asks no rich paneling, no rugs from the Orient, no art treasures from afar. He desires but sincerity, transparency, humility, and love. He will see to the rest.

Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape.

May God give you - and me- the courage, the wisdom, the strength always to hold the kingdom of God as the number one priority of our lives. To do so is to live in simplicity.

We find, sooner or later, that in prayer we either abandon ourselves or we abandon prayer.