“Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves.”
– Thomas Merton
“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. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea… In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”
– Thomas Merton