R.S. Thomas Quotes

At the beginning of the twentieth century barbarism can throw off its gentle disguise, and burn a man at the stake as complacently as in the Middle Ages.

This one sits shivering in Fortune's smile, taking his joy with bated, doubtful breath. This other, gnawed by hunger, all the while laughs in the teeth of Death.

The modern history of economic theory is a tale of evasions of reality.

Some people would believe anything, especially if it eliminates awkward social and political problems.

The purpose of economic theory is to make those who are comfortable FEEL comfortable.

The slicing technique from Flatland still remains one of the most powerful tools for dealing with aggregates in higher dimensions.

You never know whether something will be good.

As you'll never hear the thing again, my boy, why not throw in a couple of brass bands?

A criminal is undoubtedly a poor soul, who is punished for his poverty.

I had to spend my entire childhood in the Altensam dungeon like an inmate doing time for no comprehensible reason, for a crime he can't remember committing, a judicial error probably.

We publish only to satisfy out craving for fame; there's no other motive except the even baser one of making money.

I avoid literature whenever possible, because whenever possible I avoid myself.

Of all the issues we are concerned with at present, the most basic issue, in my estimation, is that of human-earth relations.

It is false to say that humanity is the most excellent being in the universe. The most excellent being in the universe is the universe itself.

The earth will solve its problems, and possibly our own, if we will let the earth function in its own ways. We need only listen to what the earth is telling us.

Scientists have suddenly become aware of the magic quality of the Earth and the entire universe.

Even as regards Earth we are more committed to history than to geography, more committed to time than to space. History is endless. Place is limited.

The success or failure of any historical age is the extent to which those living at that time have fulfilled the special role that history has imposed upon them.

Because of this erotic bond, the earth becomes luxuriant in its every aspect.

Actors speak of things imaginary as if they were real, while you preachers too often speak of things real as if they were imaginary.

I wanted to direct when I was very young. I had no idea of cinema, of who's doing what. That was my first instinct: "Okay, I want to be the boss."

When someone offers me a job or a project, I always ask myself, "What does it tell me about the world?" and "Have I seen it before?" Two good questions.

Things [only] exist once they are represented.

It's great to represent things that are not represented.

Editing is a very tough period. You're confronted with yourself. It's a deep, dark, truthful mirror.

Directing, you have to put yourself in a certain state, it's all about the energy you have and the energy you transmit to people, to the actors, to the crew. It's peculiar.

When you're a screenwriter, it's like being a mechanic. You open the hood of the story, the director is the driver, and he says, "What do you think? It's a little tough."

I think it's great to change - change country, change anything.

People who work in distribution will be distributors all their life.

Each time I had an internship to do or an essay to write, I would always do it in the field of cinema. Nobody in my family worked in film and nobody could understand it.

Cheating is baseball's oldest profession. No other game is so rich in skullduggery, so suited to it or so proud of it.

Quarterbacks have to ask the crowd to quiet down. Pitchers never do.

A good umpire, like a good FBI agent, is never noticed if he is doing his job.

A major golf tournament is 40,000 sadists watching 144 masochists.

Of the big four, the PGA is the most fair and the least fun. Basically, it's just the US Open set up by nice, rather than nasty, fellows.

An almost inexorable baseball law: A Red Sox ship with a single leak will always find a way to sink No team is worshipped with such a perverse sense of fatality.

When you fall in love with golf, you seldom fall easy. Itʹs obsession at first sight.

A narrative voice with conviction is often hard to find. But not in baseball. The minors teach two lost American arts: how to chew tobacco and how to tell a story.

There is something in us that can be without us, and will be after us, though indeed it hath no history of what it was before us, and cannot tell how it entered into us.

Age doth not rectify, but incurvate our natures, turning bad dispositions into worser habits.

There are wonders in true affection. It is a body of enigmas, mysteries, and riddles, wherein two so become one, as they both become two.

Whosoever enjoys not this life, I count him but an apparition, though he wear about him the sensible affections of flesh. In these moral acceptions, the way to be immortal is to die daily.

Where I cannot satisfy my reason, I love to humour my fancy.

I would not live over my hours past ... not unto Cicero's ground because I have lived them well, but for fear I should live them worse.

Sleep is death's younger brother, and so like him, that I never dare trust him without my prayers.

Light is but the shadow of God.

The religion of one seems madness unto another.

He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself (Christian morals).

They do most by Books, who could do much without them, and he that chiefly owes himself unto himself, is the substantial Man.

For God is like a skilfull Geometrician.