Thomas Merton Quotes

Begin within. If it shows up in your life, it's coming to tell you something about you that you're acting like you don't know. Something about yourself, or your relationship with God.

Prayer gives a man the opportunity of getting to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets. I do not mean his maker, but himself.

People just overshoot trying to find God. They're going outside and trying everything. They don't realize that it's right inside themselves.

I have gone through a period of seeking to understand what or how strong or what are the connections I have to God.

It's amazing what you'll discover if you start exploring what God has placed within you.

For me, God is in my life. I don't hide from that... I think the search has been on since the '60s.

The only way into truth is through one's own annihilation; through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation.

The well of your incompleteness runs deep, but make the effort to look away from yourself and to look toward Him.

Know thyself, for through thyself only thou canst know God.

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.

I don't spend that much time being introspective, believe it or not. All I know is that I grew up not questioning God because that's how you are. God was there like the birds and the wind.

We learn this by the precepts that Jesus left. He observed that the people were looking outward, and assured them that the kingdom of God cometh not with outward observation; and for this reason, that it was only to be known in man.

I like to take every day just searching my own heart, making sure that I'm on course, and I'm doing what God wants me to do. I'm real good with not looking to the critics and looking straight ahead.

I was raised as a Christian but the transaction has to be made by yourself - you and God - at some point.

'Faith and Will' is aimed at the same readership as 'The Artist's Way.' The book is for spiritual seekers in all walks of life.

The sacred duty of being an individual is to gradually learn how to live so as to awaken the eternal within you.

Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious - that is, that we are all trying to decipher life's big mysteries, and we're each following our own paths of enlightenment.

Man tells his aspiration in his God; but in his demon he shows his depth of experience.

If you cannot find the truth within yourself, where else do you expect to find it?

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

I found thee not, O Lord, without, because I erred in seeking thee without that wert within.

Sometimes I attract roles that are necessary either for personal growth or enlightenment.

My nature is... well... I'm a searcher by nature. I'm constantly searching for something; that's why I have a song called 'Looking for Something.' How do I do it? I read a lot of spiritual books; I meditate.

And God is always calling me to open myself to all kinds of people that I've never thought about before and also calling me on this inward spiritual journey.

When it comes to spiritual truth, how can we know that we are on the right path? One way is by asking the right questions - the kind that help us ponder our progress and evaluate how things are working for us.