Thomas Merton Quotes

If we are a people who pray, darkness is apt to be a lot of what our prayers are about. If we are people who do not pray, it is apt to be darkness in one form or another that has stopped our mouths.

Considering the unforeseen events of this world, we should be taught that no human condition should inspire men with absolute despair.

Life, that can shower you with so much splendour, is unremittingly cruel to those who have given up.

I am of the opinion, and even more so the older I get, that it is more difficult to have hope than it is to despair. And I mean this in the sense that in order to have hope you must acknowledge the despair and then you have to get beyond it. Taken from a radio interview given on BBC Radio 4's Open Book

The soul does not give itself up to despair until it has exhausted all illusions.

We need hope, or else we cannot endure.

I know that happy things and fun things eventually come to an end. But things that are scary and sad come to an end too...they always do. Even if you can't always believe that , please don't give up. Live.

How many would die did not hope sustain them.

Nobody seemed to have any perspective any longer. Those were low points. But we got through it.

Weave me a rope from this dark despair, from this dull-eyed pain... Weave me a rope from this endless night, from this distant shore... Weave me a rope that will pull me through these impossible times.

Every message of despair is the statement of a situation from which everybody must freely try to find a way out.

the way i see it, hard times aren't only about money, or drought, or dust. hard times are about losing spirit, and hope, and what happens when dreams dry up.

First, I thought, almost despairing, This must crush my spirit now; Yet I bore it, and am bearing- Only do not ask me how.

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

Poverty makes you sad as well as wise.

If you know that life is basically going to be horrendously difficult, at best, and all but unlivable at worst, or possibly even unlivable, do you go on? And the choice to go on is the only thing that I think can be called hope. Because if hope isn't forced to encounter the worst possibility, then it's a lie.

When we have lost everything, including hope, life becomes a disgrace, and death a duty.

I have been to hell and back. I have seen the edge. I have seen the dark side of life.

For me and Washington, it was like I was in a dark tunnel, and the light was really far away.

Don't lose heart if it's very difficult at times, everything will come out all right and nobody can in the beginning do as he wishes.

I could not have gone through the awful wretched mess of life without having left a stain upon the silence.

And one thing to be remembered: it is not that the people who are poor, starving, become frustrated with life - no. They cannot become frustrated. They have not lived yet - how can they be frustrated? They have hopes. A poor man always has hopes that something is going to happen - if not today then tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow; if not in this life then in the next life.

The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over.

Great hope has no real footing unless one is willing to face into the doom that may also be on the way. p.207

Because the road is rough and long, Should we despise the skylark's song?