R.S. Thomas Quotes

So I suppose poetry, language, the shaping of it, was and remains for me an effort to make sense out of essentially senseless situations.

... by doing you shall know What it is you have to do.

Creativeness is finding patterns where none exist.

Cell phones, alas, have pretty much ruined train travel, which I used to love. I could read or even sketch notes for what I was working on.

In 1860, sixty-three per cent of the couples married in Great Britain had families of four or more children; in 1925 only twenty per cent had more than four.

Where are we to look for the consumption required but among the unproductive labourers of Adam Smith?.

Hard as it may appear in individual instances , dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful.

I don't think anyone is thinking long-term now.

I shall need to sleep three weeks on end to get rested from the rest I've had.

When people get tired they will say, "Enough is enough. If you want to kill us all, you can kill us all."

Well, it's really important to be honest with the person that you're seeing.

Young anglers love new rivers the way they love the rest of their lives. Time does not seem to be of the essence and somewhere in the system is what they are looking for.

Diversity gives our city a competitive edge.

Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.

If we are to love sincerely, and with simplicity, we must first of all overcome the fear of not being loved.

A Christian is committed to the belief that Love and Mercy are the most powerful forces on earth.

There should be at least a room or some corner where no one will find you and disturb you or notice you.

What I wear is pants. What I do is live. How I pray is breathe.

People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular- and too lazy to think of anything better.

Our happiness consists in sharing the happiness of God, the perfection of His unlimited freedom, the perfection of His love.

...love triumphs, at least in this life, not by eliminating evil once for all, but by resisting and overcoming it anew every day.

There is a logic of language and a logic of mathematics.

To be a saint is to be yourself.

But precisely this illusion that everything is "clear" is what is blinding us all. It is a serious temptation, and it is a subtle form of pride and worldly love of power and revenge.

There is not true intimacy between souls who do not know how to respect one another's solitude.

Consciousness is phenomenologically subjective whenever there is a stable, consciously experienced first-person perspective.

I believe that gut feelings, the sense of balance, and spatial self-perception are so firmly coupled to our biological body that we will never be able to leave it experientially on a permanent basis.

Yea, marry, now it is somewhat, for now it is rhyme; before, it was neither rhyme nor reason.

A theory of motivation is defective if it renders intelligible behaviour which is not intelligible.

New herrings, new!' we must cry, every time we make ourselves public, or else we shall be christened with a hundred new titles of idiotism.

Immortal Spenser, no frailty hath thy fame but the imputation of this idiot's friendship!

Gordon Keith was the son a gentleman.

The experienced pastor will recognize to which situation humor belongs and to which belongs sobriety.

Remedying the deficiencies of seminary curricula is a difficult question because of all kinds of vested political interests long at work in the building of any curriculum.

You wags that judge by rote, and damn by rule.

An Ambitious woman shewes her selfe to bee a troublesome disturber of the world, powerfull to make smale things great, and great monstrous

You cant drag people from understanding to action. A customer isnt actually at the last mile if youre the one dragging her to the finish line.

Women waited 144 years before earning suffrage. If a mature, multiparty democracy was so darn easy, everybody would have one.

Governments arise either out of the people or over the people.

THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man.

The Christian church has set up a religion of pomp and revenue in pretended imitation of a person (Jesus) who lived a life of poverty.

I detest the Bible as I detest everything that is cruel.

I disbelieve all holy men and holy books.

Commerce diminishes the spirit, both of patriotism and military defence.

Before anything can be reasoned upon to a conclusion, certain facts, principles, or data, to reason from, must be established, admitted, or denied.

The stupid texts of the Bible - from which, be the talents of the preacher what they may, only stupid sermons can be preached.

I die content, I die for the liberty of my country.

There is no greater tyranny than that of the dead over the living.

Yet this is trash that the Church imposes upon the world as the Word of God; this is the collection of lies and contradictions called the Holy Bible! This is the rubbish called Revealed Religion!

The United States of America will sound as pompously in the world or in history as The Kingdom of Great Britain.