Thomas Merton

By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.

We do not exist for ourselves alone, and it is only when we are fully convinced of this fact that we begin to love ourselves properly and thus also love others.

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.

Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul.

Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul.