R.S. Thomas Quotes
The only way to avoid cannon-shot is to fall down. No such way to be freed from temptation as to keep low.
All things began in Order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again, according to the Ordainer of Order, and the mystical mathematicks of the City of Heaven.
No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another.
A man may be in as just possession of the truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.
There are no grotesques in nature; not anything framed to fill up empty cantons, and unnecessary spaces.
I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret magick of numbers.
Many-have too rashly charged the troops of error, and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth.
We term sleep a death, and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life.
Gold once out of the earth is no more due unto it; what was unreasonably committed to the ground, is reasonably resumed from it; let monuments and rich fabricks, not riches, adorn men's ashes.
But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity.
There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun.
Since women do most delight in revenge, it may seem but feminine manhood to be vindictive.
I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their inward forms.
We term sleep a death by which we may be literally said to die daily; in fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers.
Quotation mistakes, inadvertency, expedition, and human lapses, may make not only moles but warts in learned authors.
The word knight, which originally meant boy or servant, was particularly applied to a young man after he was admitted to the privilege of bearing arms.
We thus see that the Greeks of the early ages knew little of any real people except those to the east and south of their own country, or near the coast of the Mediterranean.
ON the decline of the Roman power, about five centuries after Christ, the countries of Northern Europe were left almost destitute of a national government.
Never feel dumb. Not knowing who or what is no sin. Ignorance is simply the measure of what you haven't got to yet. I find writers and works every day that I haven't got to, haven't even heard of.
How real is history? Is it just an enormous soup so full of disparate ingredients that it is uncharacterizable?
(The festival) was awfully impersonal and abstract and there was something really gloomy about it. That's when I first started thinking about the typical view of reality.
Our land, the first garden of liberty's tree-- It has been, and shall be, the land of the free.
How delicious is the winning Of a kiss at Love's beginning, When two mutual hearts are sighing For the knot there's no untying!
The popularity of that baby-faced boy, who possessed not even the elements of a good actor, was a hallucination in the public mind, and a disgrace to our theatrical history.
Kind are her answers, But her performance keeps no day; Breaks time, as dancers. From their own Music when they stray.
The lightning spark of thought generated in the solitary mind awakens its likeness in another mind.
Men's hearts ought not to be set against one another, but set with one another and all against evil only.
