Merton and Waugh Quotes

“Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer has become impossible and your heart has turned to stone.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Merton and Waugh: A Monk, A Crusty Old Man, and The Seven Storey Mountain

“Church again. My prayer is now only, ‘Here I am again. Show me what to do; help me do it.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Merton and Waugh: A Monk, A Crusty Old Man, and The Seven Storey Mountain

“Never send off any piece of writing the moment it is finished. Put it aside. Take on something else. Go back to it a month later and re-read it. Examine each sentence and ask “Does this say precisely what I mean? Is it capable of misunderstanding? Have I used a cliché where I could have invented a new and therefore asserting and memorable form? Have I repeated myself and wobbled round the point when I could have fixed the whole thing in six rightly chosen words? Am I using words in their basic meaning or in a loose plebeian way?” …”
― Mary Frances Coady, Merton and Waugh: A Monk, A Crusty Old Man, and The Seven Storey Mountain

“I understand conservatism. He is one of the genuine conservatives: he wishes to conserve not what might be lost but what is not even threatened because it vanished long ago.”
― Thomas Merton, Merton and Waugh: A Monk, A Crusty Old Man, and The Seven Storey Mountain

“I need criticism the way a man dying of thirst needs water.”
― Thomas Merton, Merton and Waugh: A Monk, A Crusty Old Man, and The Seven Storey Mountain