" Then we discover what the spiritual life really is. It is not a matter of doing one good work rather than another, of living in one place or in another, of praying in one way rather than in another. It is not a matter of any special psychological effect in our own soul. If it is the silence of our whole being in compunction and adoration before God, in the habitual realization that He is everything and we are nothing, that He is the Center to which all things tend, and to Whom all our actions must be directed. "

― Thomas Merton , Thoughts in Solitude