Dylan Thomas Quotes

Oh, isn't life a terrible thing, thank God?

I have been told to reason by the heart, But heart, like head, leads helplessly; I have been told to reason by the pulse, And, when it quickens, alter the actions' pace

It is the measure of my individual struggle from darkness toward some measure of light.

To begin, at the beginning.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.

The condition of the world today is such that most writers feel they cannot truthfully be "comic" about it.

The function of posterity is to look after itself.

Beginning with doom in the bulb, the spring unravels.

Washington isn't a city, it's an abstraction.

The land of my fathers. My fathers can have it.

But oh, San Francisco! It is and has everything - you wouldn't think that such a place as San Francisco could exist.

And on seesaw Sunday nights, I'd woo who ever I would with my wicked eye!

This poem has been called obscure. I refuse to believe that it is obscurer than pity, violence, or suffering. But being a poem, not a lifetime, it is more compressed.

Too many of the artists of Wales spend too much time talking about the position of theartists of Wales.There is only one position for an artist anywhere: and that is, upright.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower drives my green age.

The moment of a miracle is unending lightning.

I used to think that once a writer became a man of letters, if only for a half hour, he was done for. And here I am now, at the very moment of such an odious, though respectable, danger.

Sleeping as quiet as death, side by wrinkled side, toothless, salt and brown, like two old kippers in a box.

The photograph is married to the eye, Grafts on its bride one-sided skins of truth.

... Rebel against the flesh and bone, The word of the blood, the wily skin, And the maggot no man can slay.

I learnt the verbs of will, and had my secret; The code of night tapped on my tongue; What had been one was many sounding minded.

Nothing grows in our garden, only washing. And babies.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.

I know in London a Welsh hairdresser who has striven so vehemently to abolish his accent that he sounds like a man speaking with the Elgin marbles in his mouth.

Great is the hand that holds dominion over man by a scribbled name.

Love drips & gathers, but the fallen blood Shall calm her sores..." -Thomas, The Force that through the green fuse drives the flower.

All world was one, one windy nothing, My world was christened in a stream of milk.

[I'm]a freak user of words, not a poet.

Hands have not tears to flow.

Poetry is what makes my toenails twinkle.

Dark is a way and light is a place, Heaven that never was Nor will be ever is always true "Poem on His Birthday

A springful of larks in a rolling Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling Blackbirds and the sun of October Summery On the hill's shoulder.

Rage, rage against the dying light

And I rose In rainy autumn And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.

A truly comic, invented world must live at the same time as the world we live in.

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I'd be a damn' fool if they weren't.

This bread I break was once the oat, This wine upon a foreign tree Plunged in its fruit; Man in the day or wind at night Laid the crops low, broke the grape's joy.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

I sang in my chains like the sea

I have just had eighteen whiskeys in a row. I do believe that is a record.

There is only one po- sition for an artist anywhere: and that is, upright.

Seventeen whiskeys. A record, I think.

And from the first declension of the flesh I learnt man's tongue, to twist the shapes of thoughts Into the stony idiom of the brain.

Break in the sun till the sun breaks down, And death shall have no dominion.

This world is half the devil's and my own, Daft with the drug that's smoking in a girl and curling round the bud that forks her eye.

Shall I let in the stranger, Shall I welcome the sailor, Or stay till the day I die? Hands of the stranger and holds of the ships, Hold you poison or grapes?

In the beginning was the word, the word That from the solid bases of the light Abstracted all the letters of the void.

Families, like countries, take their prophets unkindly, but a verse-speaker in the house is dishonor to be hooted.

In the beginning was the secret brain. The brain was celled and soldered in the thought

An alcoholic is someone you don't like, who drinks as much as you do.