The real hope is not in something we think we can do, but in God, who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see.

Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can only discover from within.

The only true liberty is in the service of that which is beyond all limits, beyond all definitions, beyond all human appreciation: that which is All, and which therefore is no limited or individual thing: The All is no-thing, for if it were to be a single thing separated from all other things, it would not be All.

We are obliged to love one another. We are not strictly bound to "like" one another.

Contemplative living is living in true relationship with oneself, God, others and nature, free of the illusions of separateness.

Zen is consciousness unstructured by particular form or particular system, a trans-cultural, trans-religious, transformed consciousness.

Jesus lived and died in vain if He did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal law of love. Gandhi, quoted in Merton, p. 38