Thomas Merton

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

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.

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.

Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.

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

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