Thomas MertonThinkers

Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity.

Art is characterized by the fact that it enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

Church is the most wonderful solitudes.

City life is geared to keep man from entering into himself and thinking about spiritual things. A spiritual man finds himself exhausted and deadened and debased by the constant noise of machines and loudspeakers, the dead air and the glaring lights of offices and shops, the everlasting suggestion of advertising and propaganda.

December is a month of ambition, for all the lassitudes of August have seeped out of one's blood.

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.

Love is letting those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image lest we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

The Meaning of life is not found alone, it is found together. As such, love is our true destiny.

Prayer is an activity in which one thinks and speaks not only with the mind and lips, but in a certain sense with one's whole being. . . All good meditative prayer is a conversation of our entire self to God.