R.S. Thomas Quotes

Things evidently false are not only printed, but many things of truth most falsely set forth.

Be substantially great in thyself, and more than thou appearest unto others.

To make an end of all things on Earth, and our Planetical System of the World, he (God) need but put out the Sun.

Study prophecies when they are become histories.

That some have never dreamed is as improbable as that some have never laughed.

The man without a navel still lives in me.

He who must needs have company, must needs have sometimes bad company.

My soul to-day Is far away Sailing the Vesuvian Bay.

Look how the blue-eyed violets glance love to one another.

All in their lifetime carve their own soul's statue.

Under his spurning feet, the road Like an arrowly alpine river flowed And the landscape sped away behind Like an ocean flying before the wind.

To explain too much is to steal a person's opportunity to learn, and stealing is against the Law.

I am glad I am an optimist. The pessimist is half-licked before he starts.

The earliest form in which romances appear is that of a rude kind of verse.

If no other knowledge deserves to be called useful but that which helps to enlarge our possessions or to raise our station in society, then Mythology has no claim to the appellation.

It was not till toward the end of the thirteenth century that the prose romances began to appear.

When it's over, we may feel wooed, adored, appreciated, or abused, but it will have been an affair to remember.

Ghosts and vampires are never only about ghosts and vampires.

Real people are made out of a whole lot of things-flesh, bone, blood, nerves, stuff like that. Literary people are made out of words.

Don't wait for writers to be dead to be read; the living ones can use the money.

Whenever people eat or drink together, it's communion.

Is is seldom possible to say of the medievals that they *always* did one thing and *never* another; they were marvelously inconsistent.

One moment may with bliss repay Unnumbered hours of pain.

Truth ever lovely - since the world began, The foe of tyrants, and the friend of man.

What millions died that Caesar might be great!

Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent.

Tomorrow let us do or die!

Love! the surviving gift of Heaven, The choicest sweet of Paradise, In life's else bitter cup distilled.

Love's a fire that needs renewal Of fresh beauty for its fuel.

Oh, how hard it is to find The one just suited to our mind!

I'll meet the raging of the skies, but not an angry father.

Men of England! who inheritRights that cost your sires their blood.

Ye are brothers! ye are men! And we conquer but to save.

Triumphal arch, that fill'st the sky When storms prepare to part, I ask not proud Philosophy To teach me what thou art.

Never wedding, ever wooing, Still a lovelorn heart pursuing, Read you not the wrong you're doing In my cheek's pale hue? All my life with sorrow strewing; Wed or cease to woo.

The prophet's mantle, ere his flight began, Dropt on the world--a sacred gift to man.

On Linden, when the sun was low, All bloodless lay the untrodden snow, And dark as winter was the flow Of Iser, rolling rapidly.

O star-eyed Science, hast thou wander'd there, To waft us home the message of despair?

A stoic of the woods,--a man without a tear.

Who hath not own'd, with rapture-smitten frame, The power of grace, the magic of a name.

Ye mariners of England! That guard our native seas; Whose flag has braved a thousand years, The battle and the breeze!

Whose lines are mottoes of the heart,Whose truths electrify the sage.

On the green banks of Shannon, when Sheelah was nigh, No blithe Irish lad was so happy as I, No harp like my own could so cheerily play, And wherever I went was my poor dog Tray.

Beauty's witching sway is now to me a star that's fallen-a dream that's passed away.

The meteor flag of England Shall yet terrific burn, Till danger's troubled night depart, And the star of peace return.

Who hail thee, Man! the pilgrim of the day, spouse of the worm, and brother of the clay.

O leave this barren spot to me! Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree.

For there no yew nor cypress spread their glom But roses blossom'd each rustic tomb.

But sad as angels for the good man's sin, Weep to record, and blush to give it in.

Without the smile from partial beauty won, O what were man? - a world without a sun.