Thomas Merton

“Prayer is the lifting of the heart toward God.”

“Prayer is not just doing something. Prayer is being something.”

“It is being open to God.”

“Don't worry about being eloquent. Eloquence is not what God listens to.”

“God listens to the heart.”

“He is more interested in your sincerity than in your style.”

“In silence we learn to make distinctions.”

“In noise, everything sounds the same.”

“You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going.”

“What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment.”

“And to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.”

“Do not depend on the hope of results.”

“You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all.”

“If not perhaps results opposite to what you expect.”

“As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.”

“And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually as you struggle less and less for an idea.”

“And more and more for specific people.”

“In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.”

“The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.”