Thomas Merton Quotes

There is so much noise in the world! May we learn to be silent in our hearts and before God.

It is to this silence [contemplative prayer] that we all are called.

Silence, you know, is the best place to get close to spirit for me.

If I were a physician, and if I were allowed to prescribe just one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence. For even if the Word of God were proclaimed in the modern world, how could one hear it with so much noise? Therefore, create silence.

Stop, stop. Do not speak. The ultimate truth is not even to think.

Above anything, welcome silence, for it brings fruits that no tongue can speak of, neither can it be explained.

The heart beats louder and the soul hears quicker in silence and solitude.

Let us leave a little room for reflection in our lives, room too for silence. Let us look within ourselves and see whether there is some delightful hidden place inside where we can be free of noise and argument. Let us hear the Word of God in stillness and perhaps we will then come to understand it.

Let us allow ourselves to be 'infected' by St. Joseph's silence! We need it greatly, in a world that is often too noisy, that does not favor meditation or listening to the voice of God.

The disciplines of prayer, silence, and contemplation as practiced by the monastics and mystics are precisely that - stopping the noise, slowing down, and becoming still so that God can break through all our activity and noise to speak to us. Prayer serves to put all parts of our lives in God's presence, reminding us how holy our humanity really is.

Let us accept the invitation, ever-open, from the Stillness, taste its exquisite sweetness, and heed its silent instruction.

Sit with silence a lot - real silence, where nothing is happening - because you learn so much in those moments of quiet.

Never underestimate the power of sitting quietly.

Real music will make you more and more refined. It will become more and more silent. In fact, real music will help you to listen to silence, where all notes disappear, where only gaps remain. One note comes, disappears, and another has not come, and there is a gap. In that gap meditation flows in you.

The word must be heard in silence; there must be darkness to see the stars.

Through the portals of silence the healing sun of wisdom and peace will shine upon you.

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore.

Only when the clamor of the outside world is silenced will you be able to hear the deeper vibration. Listen carefully.

Meditation is silence, energising and fulfilling. Silent is the eloquent expression of the inexpressible.

I feel that I need to return to the pure stillness periodically. And then, when the teaching happens, just allow it to arise out of the stillness. So the teaching and stillness are very closely connected. The teaching arises out of the stillness. But when I'm alone, there's only the stillness, and that is my favorite place.

We try to abolish intervals by our manic insistence on keeping busy, on doing something. And as a result, all we succeed in doing is destroying all hope of tranquility. ... . You have to learn to immerse yourself in the silences between.

The true creativity comes out of sitting silently. When you are so totally quiet that there is no thought, no wave in the ocean of your being, out of this silence comes a different kind of creativity.

Inner silence works from the moment you begin to accrue it. What the old sorcerers were after was the final dramatic, end result of reaching that individual threshold of silence.

Sit quietly and listen for a voice that will say, "Be more silent." As that happens, your soul starts to revive.