CMB

“There is a monastic outlook which is common to all those who have elected to question the value of a life submitted entirely to arbitrary secular presuppositions, dictated by social convention, and dedicated to the pursuit of temporal satisfactions which are perhaps only a mirage. Whatever may be the value of "life in the world" there have been, in all cultures, men who have claimed to find something they vastly prefer in solitude. (p. 10)”
― Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from —”
― C.S. Lewis, Till we have Faces : A Myth Retold

“Tao is obscured when men understand only one of a pair of opposites, or concentrate only on a partial aspect of being. (p. 42)”
― Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu

“God is the most obvious thing in the world. He is absolutely self-evident-the simplest, clearest and closest reality of life and consciousness. We are only unaware of him because we are too complicated, for our vision is darkened by the complexity of pride. We seek him beyond the horizon with our noses lifted high in the air, and fail to see that he lies at our very feet. We flatter ourselves in premeditating the long, long journey we are going to take in order to find him, the giddy heights of spiritual progress we are going to scale, and all the time are unaware of the truth that “God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves." We are like birds flying in quest of the air, or men with lighted candles searching through the darkness for fire. (p. 90)”
― Alan W. Watts, Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion