R.S. Thomas Quotes

I love thee - I love thee, 'Tis all that I can say, It is my vision in the night, My dreaming in the day.

For my part, getting up seems not so easy By half as lying.

A name, it has more than nominal worth, And belongs to good or bad luck at birth

Father of rosy day, No more thy clouds of incense rise; But waking flow'rs, At morning hours, Give out their sweets to meet thee in the skies.

What is a modern poet's fate? / To write his thoughts upon a slate; / The critic spits on what is done, / Gives it a wipe - and all is gone.

There is not a string attuned to mirth but has its chord of melancholy.

When he is forsaken, Withered and shaken, What can an old man do but die?

The best of friends fall out, and so his teeth had done some years ago.

Extremes meet', as the whiting said with its tail in its mouth.

No blessed leisure for love or hope, But only time for grief.

It was a childish ignorance, But now 'tis little joy To know I'm further off from heaven Than when I was a boy.

While the steeples are loud in their joy, To the tune of the bells' ring-a-ding, Let us chime in a peal, one and all, For we all should be able to sing Hullah baloo.

Mature? Yeah, I get told that a lot. I don't know if it's true. I guess I try to be bright.

The definition of art has changed almost every day since the first artist created the first work at least fifty thousand years ago.

Art happens when anyone in the world takes any kind of material and fashions it into a deliberate statement.

With each change of definition in art, something considered non-art or bad art by a previous generation is suddenly acceptable.

The definition of art has to shift whenever an innovator appears.

Even if virtually anything can be art, there are levels of quality.

He never wants anything but what's right and fair; only when you come to settle what's right and fair, it's everything that he wants and nothing that you want. And that's his idea of a compromise.

Life isn't all beer and skittles.

Veracity is the heart of morality.

Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.

Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing.

[Scientists] have learned to respect nothing but evidence, and to believe that their highest duty lies in submitting to it however it may jar against their inclinations.

Science has fulfilled her function when she has ascertained and enunciated truth.

Teach a child what is wise, that is morality. Teach him what is wise and beautiful, that is religion!

The child who has been taught to make an accurate elevation, plan, and section of a pint pot has had an admirable training in accuracy of eye and hand.

I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.

The medieval university looked backwards; it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge. The modern university looks forward, and is a factory of new knowledge.

The world is neither wise nor just, but it makes up for all its folly and injustice by being damnably sentimental.

It is not to be forgotten that what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.

Misery is a match that never goes out.

There is no greater mistake than the hasty conclusion that opinions are worthless because they are badly argued.

Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature.

I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything...

The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying.

Unity of plan everywhere lies hidden under the mask: of diversity of structure-the complex is everywhere evolved out of the simple.

It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organization upon the natural organization of the body.

Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.

The Right of all members of society to form their own beliefs and communicate them freely to others must be regarded as an essential principle of a democratically organized society.

The function of the censor is to censor. He has a professional interest in finding things to suppress.

If you want to catch a cold, hang out with sick people. If you want to lose, associate with losers. But if you want to become successful, go out of your way to associate with successful people.

Loyalty saves the wear and tear of making daily decisions as to what is best to do.

You don't hear things that are bad about your company unless you ask. It is easy to hear good tidings, but you have to scratch to get the bad news.

The way to succeed is to double your error rate.

Most of my career up until the last couple of years has basically been a training ground for me. Actors that came up in the '50s and '60s, they had the theater, and television was in its infancy.

I think what makes us human is our interconnectedness among people. It's our ability to form and maintain relationships. It's the barometer by which we call ourselves human.

Harrison Ford - one of my favorite actors - has a wonderful sense of character and depth and uniqueness to him, yet he's able to just deliver the lines without putting any English on it.

I still collect comics. I still have a great love and respect for the genre.

My dad was an entrepreneurial businessman, and maybe I got some of his ability.