Thomas Merton Quotes

I just don't know that shame and fear need to be our teachers; rather, compassion, understanding, and love should be our guides.

Teach my children to love! They'll learn to hate on their own.

Compassion and tolerance are not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength.

You can't expect everyone to love you. I'm not someone who just wants to throw out hate, just because.

Compassion has enemies, and those enemies are things like pity, moral outrage, fear.

We may fight against what is wrong, but if we allow ourselves to hate, that is to insure our spiritual defeat and our likeness to what we hate.

Tolerance, compromise, understanding, acceptance, patience - I want those all to be very sharp tools in my shed.

A true man hates no one.

Love is love. And it's much better than hatred and fear.

Perhaps the greatest charity comes when we are kind to each other, when we don’t judge or categorize someone else, when we simply give each other the benefit of the doubt or remain quiet. Charity is accepting someone’s differences, weaknesses, and shortcomings; having patience with someone who has let us down; or resisting the impulse to become offended when someone doesn’t handle something the way we might have hoped. Charity is refusing to take advantage of another’s weakness and being willing to forgive someone who has hurt us. Charity is expecting the best of each other

One should never condemn what one cannot understand.

A truly compassionate attitude toward others does not change even if they behave negatively or hurt you.

Instead of condemning people, let's try to understand them. Let's try to figure out why they do what they do. That's a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness.

To love is human, it is also human to forgive.

I think we ought to give ourselves more time. We should be more patient with ourselves and with each other.

You hate evil, but you don't hate the people that do evil. So, hate has to go out the window.

There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, I said, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too.

To understand everything is to hate nothing.

Hate the sin and not the sinner' is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practiced, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world.

Believe the best about people. Pray for their short comings. You are not the standard. We all need grace.

We, the human beings in this world, if there is a spark of goodness or kindness in our hearts, avoid judging people. We prefer forgiving to judging.

No one thing does human life more need than a kind consideration of the faults of others. Every one sins; everyone needs forbearance. Our own imperfections should teach us to be merciful.

Hating people isn’t a productive way of living. So what’s the point in hating anyone? There’s enough hate in the world as it is, without me adding to it.

You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humour teaches tolerance, and the humorist, with a smile and perhaps a sigh, is more likely to shrug his shoulders than to condemn.

We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend.