War & Peace Quote by Thomas Merton

Merton’s line reads like a folksy packing list, but it’s engineered as spiritual triage: a handful of short imperatives meant to keep a person upright in a world that soaks you, blinds you, agitates you, and finally hollows you out. “Be good” is the blunt moral baseline, almost deliberately unsophisticated, because Merton isn’t trying to win an ethics seminar; he’s trying to steady a living person. The next phrases descend into the body. “Keep your feet dry” suggests ordinary prudence, yes, but also a monk’s suspicion of soggy romanticism and self-inflicted misery. Dry feet are what you need to keep walking.

Then comes attention: “your eyes open.” Merton’s intent is never piety-as-numbness. This is the writer who warned against spiritual sleepwalking, against ideology and consumer noise that can pass for “life.” Open eyes are a discipline: stay awake to what’s real, including your own evasions.

The emotional pivot is “your heart at peace,” which isn’t the same as comfort. Peace here implies a hard-won interior nonreactivity, the kind cultivated in silence but tested in conflict. In the mid-century context Merton inhabited - Cold War anxiety, technological acceleration, the moral crisis of war - peace becomes both personal practice and quiet resistance.

The closing clause, “your soul in the joy of Christ,” ties the whole checklist to its engine. Joy isn’t a reward for good behavior; it’s the fuel that keeps goodness from curdling into scrupulosity. Subtext: stay practical, stay awake, stay unpanicked, and let the center hold.