R.S. Thomas Quotes

What though my winged hours of bliss have been, Like angel visits, few and far between.

Of all God's creatures, Man alone is poor.

There is so much data available to us, but most data won't help us succeed.

Woe to him, . . . who has no court of appeal against the world's judgment.

With stupidity and sound digestion, man may front much.

The times are very bad. Very well, you are there to make them better.

Authors are the vanguard in the march of mind, the intellectual backwoodsmen, reclaiming from the idle wilderness new territories for the thought and activity of their happier brethren.

The greatest event for the world is the arrival of a new and wise person.

My books are friends that never fail me.

Oblivion is the dark page, whereon Memory writes her light-beam characters, and makes them legible; were it all light, nothing could be read there, any more than if it were all darkness.

Whoso has sixpence is sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over all men; commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over him,to the length of sixpence.

The actual well seen is ideal.

Teaching school is but another word for sure and not very slow destruction.

Fancy that thou deservest to be hangedthou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot: fancy that thou deservest to be hanged ina hair halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp.

Little other than a red tape Talking-machine, and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquence.

Success in life, in anything, depends upon the number of persons that one can make himself agreeable to.

To each is given a certain inward talent, a certain outward environment or fortune; to each by wisest combination of these two, a certain maximum capacity.

A frightful dialect for the stupid, the pedant and dullard sort.

Biography is the most universally pleasant and profitable of all reading.

All comes out even at the end of the day.

We arc the miracle of miracles, the great inscrutable mystery of God.

He that has done nothing has known nothing.

Worship of a hero is transcendent admiration of a great man.

Let him who would move and convince others, be first moved and convinced himself.

The all importance of clothes has sprung up in the intellect of the dandy without effort, like an instinct of genius; he is inspired with clothes, a poet of clothes.

God gave you that gifted tongue of yours, and set it between your teeth, to make known your true meaning to us, not to be rattled like a muffin man's bell.

No age seemed the age of romance to itself.

One is hardly sensible of fatigue while he marches to music.

A witty statesman said, you might prove anything by figures.

Hope is a pleasant acquaintance, but an unsafe friend, not the man for your banker, though he may do for a traveling companion.

Wishes, like castles in the air, are inexpensive and not taxable.

The law, unfortunately, has always been retained on the side of power; laws have uniformly been enacted for the protection and perpetuation of power.

Our lives are not dependent on whether or not we have conflict. It is what we do with conflict that makes the difference.

Conflict isn't negative, it just is.

Everyone learns in a crisis.

The Americans are and remain our best friends, but this is absolutely not right. We can't simply return to business as usual.

I am sympathetic to the fact that Turkey is doing everything it can to prevent the civil war in Syria from spilling over into its own country.

It is one of the misfortunes in life that one must read thousands of books only to discover that one need not have read them.

I feel that there is no such thing as ultimate forgetting; traces once impressed upon the memory are indestructible.

Everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated everlasting farewells!

The public is a bad guesser.

Fish stimulates the brain, but fishing stimulates the imagination.

It is no coincidence that some of America's most lethargic industries-steel, footwear, rubber, textiles-are also among the most heavily protected.

Etch out the future on your own design.

The games industry is already bigger than the music industry, and it's mainly directed at teenage boys.

Well, you know, I mean, I first did my live shows in the late 70's and in those days I had a boatload of equipment that always seemed to be going wrong.

The best preparation for a better life next year is a full, complete, harmonious, joyous life this year.

Creation is a book proclaiming the Creator. It is a book of beauty that our intellect reads, but through the passageways of our five senses.

The main problem in developing a deep prayer life is by far the failure to live the radicality of the Gospel, hour by hour and day by day.

When greater perils men inviron, Then women show a front of iron; And, gentle in their manner, they Do bold things in a quiet way.