Everything in modern city life is calculated to keep man from entering into himself and thinking about spiritual things. Even with the best of intentions 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. The whole mechanism of modern life is geared for a flight from God and from the spirit into the wilderness of neurosis.
Thomas MertonGrace is not a strange, magic substance which is subtly filtered into our souls to act as a kind of spiritual penicillin. Grace is unity, oneness within ourselves, oneness with God.
Thomas MertonWhat can we gain by sailing to the moon if we cannot cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?
Thomas MertonOur knowledge of God is perfected by gratiitude: we are thankful and rejoice in the experience of the truth that He is love.
Thomas MertonThe greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer us great evils masking as the greatest goods.
Thomas Merton