Teenagers have no monopoly (on adolescent behavior), except insofar as we are in fact a teenager society – a society that likes to play “chicken,” not with fast cars, but with ballistic missiles.
Thomas Merton Quotes
We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products […]
Peace is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.
I suppose what makes me most glad is that we all recognize each other in this metaphysical space of silence and happening, and get some sense, for a moment, that we are full of paradise without knowing it.
We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.
Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.
In this age of crowds in which I have determined to be a solitary, perhaps the greatest sin would be to lament the presence of people on the threshold of my solitude.
Christianity is more than doctrine
Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity.
The biggest human temptation is not to have too much ambition, but to settle for too little.
