Thomas Merton Quotes

In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.

Being that can be understood is language.

When you are there, you are. With words, you aren't.

It's not that I don't like words. There's sometimes no need for words.

Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

I like words. Words are places, rooms, distant airs, thin and tropical. They make us feel and imagine we are more than our bodies.

Words are men's daughters, but God's sons are things.

Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one's never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.

All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

Unless one understands the power of words, he will never understand men.

Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms.

If I can learn to understand this language without words, I can learn to understand the world.

For language to have meaning, there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He who retires into silence does not necessarily hate language. Perhaps it is love and respect for language which imposes silence upon him. For the mercy of God is not heard in words unless it is heard, both before and after the words are spoken, in silence.

It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.

All we can ever do is lay a word in the hands of those who have put one in ours.

We're fascinated by the words--but where we meet is in the silence behind them.

Words and a book and a belief that the world is words.

Why must one talk? Often one shouldn't talk, but live in silence. The more one talks, the less the words mean. (Nana Kleinfrankenheim, Vivre Sa Vie)

One of the hardest things in the world is to convey a meaning accurately from one mind to another.

Words of the world are the life of the world.

Words are like eyeglasses they blur everything that they do not make clear.

Only where there is language is there world.

Words build bridges into unexplored regions.

I'm very interested in language because it reflects our obsessions and ways of conceptualising the world.