Thomas Merton Quotes

I've spent twenty-eight years doing what everyone around me expected me to do...being what everyone around me has expected me to be. And it's horrid to be someone else's vision of yourself.

So, the important thing for us to remember, when we're searching for right livelihood, is to stop looking for something to do, and start looking for something to be. And to get in touch with that part that resides deep inside of you that knows who you really are. And see what it would take to call that forth in a BEINGNESS way.

You are unique, and if that is not fulfilled, then something has been lost.

Find out who you are. And do it on purpose.

I wanted to be a woman, first. And then singer. And then actress. For me, to me it's not as important what you do so much as who you are.

I just want to be normal, like everybody else." "Are you sure that being like everybody else will make you happy?

Many people will never learn the lessons meant for them in this lifetime, nor become the person they were meant to be, simply because they are too busy being someone else.

I don't want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

One of the greatest struggles of becoming an adult is figuring out what you want to do and what makes you happy. The courageous thing is to stick with it and see it through and see if you were correct.

Don't imitate. If you want to know who you are, please avoid imitation, that's a way of avoiding knowing yourself.

I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

To be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves.

When the deepest part of you becomes engaged in what you are doing, when your activities and actions become gratifying and purposeful, when what you do serves both yourself and others, when you do not tire within but seek the sweet satisfaction of your life and your work, you are doing what you were meant to be doing.

Life has meaning only if you do what is meaningful to you.

It takes a well-spent lifetime, and perhaps more, to crystalize in us that for which we exist.

Stop trying to figure out what is 'best' for you (how you can win the most, lose the least, get what you want) and start going with what feels like Who You Are.

Nothing will kill what you've been called to do more than comparing yourself to someone else.

Every man knows that his highest purpose in life cannot be reduced to any particular relationship. If a man prioritizes his relationship over his highest purpose, he weakens himself, disserves the universe, and cheats his woman of an authentic man who can offer his full, undivided presence.

Savor what you are and not what everyone else wants you to be.

In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential that we embody. If we do not embody that, life is wasted.

If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, - under all these screens I have diffuculty to detect the precise man you are: and of course so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blind-man's bluff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect I anticipate your argument.

To learn and to love, that is what we are here for, any activity which is not grounded in one of these two is a waste of time.

You're never going to please everyone - you might as well be who God made you to be.

Everything has its own place and function. That applies to people, although many don't seem to realize it, stuck as they are in the wrong job, the wrong marriage, or the wrong house. When you know and respect your Inner Nature, you know where you belong. You also know where you don't belong.