In 1987, I was in Edinburgh doing my first one-man show. I took part in a kickabout with some fellow comedians and tripped over my trousers and heard this cracking sound in my leg. A couple of days later I went into a coma and was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism.


Paul Merton

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The real reason why so few men believe in God is that they have ceased to believe that even a God ca...
THOMAS MERTON
God does not demand that every man attain to what is theoretically highest and best. It is better to...
THOMAS MERTON
For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God'...
THOMAS MERTON
The greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer...
THOMAS MERTON
But the man who is not afraid to admit everything that he sees to be wrong with himself, and yet rec...
THOMAS MERTON
Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without th...
THOMAS MERTON
It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done. In ...
THOMAS MERTON
The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround ...
THOMAS MERTON
To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us - and He has given us e...
THOMAS MERTON
Our Christian destiny is, in fact, a great one: but we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all i...
THOMAS MERTON
On the last day of January 1915, in the second year of the Great War, down in the shadow of some Fre...
THOMAS MERTON
It's not the easiest thing to meet the friends of someone you've fallen in love with...
THOMAS MERTON
The Bible is not primarily a written or printed text to be scrutinized in private, in a scholar's st...
THOMAS MERTON
There was this shadow, this double, this writer who had followed me into the cloister. He rides my s...
THOMAS MERTON
Be good, keep your feet dry, your eyes open, your heart at peace and your soul in the joy of Christ.
THOMAS MERTON
Think of it, all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody…What a thing it is to s...
THOMAS MERTON
Life is this simple: We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining thro...
THOMAS MERTON
Men in bowlers and dark suits with their rolled-up umbrellas. Men full of propriety, calm and proud,...
THOMAS MERTON
Technology is not in itself opposed to spirituality and to religion. But it presents a great temptat...
THOMAS MERTON
The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.
THOMAS MERTON
In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for ''finding...
THOMAS MERTON
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was sud...
THOMAS MERTON
Perhaps I am stronger than I think
THOMAS MERTON
The degradation of the sense of symbol in modern society is one of its many signs of spiritual decay...
THOMAS MERTON
Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real
THOMAS MERTON
Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments.
THOMAS MERTON
To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many...
THOMAS MERTON
We have to have a deep, patient compassion for the fears of men and irrational mania of those who ha...
THOMAS MERTON
To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to li...
THOMAS MERTON
We thought it would have significance for practice but nothing of the magnitude that's occurred over...
ROBERT MERTON
In effect, the same kind of methodology or technology that was developed about 25 years ago is being...
ROBERT MERTON
The moral mandate to achieve success exerts pressure to succeed by fair means, if possible, and by f...
ROBERT MERTON
It is a good idea to be ambitious, to have goals, to want to be good at what you do, but it is a ter...
ROBERT MERTON
The point is not that they will then be nice to you. It is that you will feel better about yourself.
ROBERT MERTON
We must be willing to accept the bitter truth that, in the end, we may have to become a burden to th...
THOMAS MERTON
If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.
THOMAS MERTON
Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism.
THOMAS MERTON
To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many...
THOMAS MERTON
Be still:
There is no longer any need of comment.
It was a lucky wind
That blew away ...
THOMAS MERTON
For Abelard, the death of Christ on the Cross did not, strictly speaking, redeem man: it only offere...
THOMAS MERTON
And yet with every wound You robbed me of a crime,
And as each blow was paid with Blood,
Y...
THOMAS MERTON
Surrender your own poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord. Whether you understand it o...
THOMAS MERTON
I brought all the instincts of a writer with me into the monastery.
THOMAS MERTON
All men who live only according to their five senses, and seek nothing beyond the gratification of t...
THOMAS MERTON
Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to t...
THOMAS MERTON
Power always protects the good of some at the expense of all others.
THOMAS MERTON
I suppose what makes me most glad is that we all recognize each other in this metaphysical space of ...
THOMAS MERTON
What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from...
THOMAS MERTON
We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at th...
THOMAS MERTON
We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace ...
THOMAS MERTON
The Bible is not primarily a written or printed text to be scrutinized in private, in a scholar's st...
THOMAS MERTON