R.S. Thomas Quotes

Violence is essentially wordless. and it can begin only where thought and rational communication have broken down.

There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relation with realities outside and above us.

In meditative prayer, one thinks and speaks not only with the mind and lips, but in a certain sense with one's whole being... All good meditative prayer is a conversation of our entire self to God.

You pray best when the mirror of your soul is empty of every image except the Image of the Invisible Father.

I am earth, earth My heart's love Bursts with hay and flowers. I am a lake of blue air In which my own appointed place Field and valley Stand reflected

A gentle sense of humor will be alert to detect anything that savors of a pious 'act' on the part of the penitent.

For our duties and our needs, in all the fundamental things for which we were created, come down in practice to the same thing.

The center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth.

There is a subtle but inescapable connection between the "sacred" attitude and the acceptance of one's in most self.

It might be good to open our eyes and see.

In the spiritual life there is no such thing as an indifference to love or hate.

I refuse to be misled by any kind of a mirage about any alleged success of what I write. Those things are too easily exaggerated, and even when they are true, they always mean less than they seem to.

Someone who cannot stop his outer flow of words will soon be unable to communicate with other human beings at all.

As a philosopher, you define constraints for any good theory explaining what you are interested in, then you go out and search for help in other disciplines.

The Ego is a transparent mental image: You, the physical person as a whole, look right through it. You do not see it. But you see with it.

Subjectivity is an ability, the capacity to use a new inner mode of presenting the fact that you currently know something to yourself.

I could never understand how someone would embark on their life without having first confronted and clarified the truly fundamental questions.

If we lose the ability in question for a single moment only, we are immediately being hijacked by an aggressive little "Think me!" and our mind begins to wander.

You cannot be a rational subject without veto-control on the level of mental action.

All attention is introspection.

Chicago was where I realized that improv is its own thing, its own art form. And through that, you kind of develop a work ethic of not selling it short.

I've always been a gamer. I play a version of Dungeons & Dragons.

Soul is to be found in the vicinity of taboo.

Though the last glimpse of Erin with sorrow I see, Yet wherever thou art shall seem Erin to me; In exile thy bosom shall still be my home, And thine eyes make my climate wherever we roam.

It's a poor doctor who can't cure one disease without giving you another.

See me safe up: for in my coming down, I can shift for myself.

And peradventure we have more cause to thank Him for our loss than for our winning; for His wisdom better seeth what is good for us than we do ourselves.

The servant may not look to be in better case than his master.

No more like together than is chalke to coles.

And one wild Shakespeare, following Nature's lights, Is worth whole planets, filled with Stagyrites.

. . . the state of things and the dispositions of men were then such, that a man could not well tell whom he might trust or whom he might fear.

I'm hopeful that people don't give up on marriage. When it works, it's a gift from God because you can't always have it work out the way you want.

I'm not Mr. Nice Guy, I'm a tough cookie

I was thinking that if I hit his nuts, maybe he would serve like a woman.

If you want the truth rather than merely something to say, you will have a good deal less to say.

To look for a single general theory of how to decide the right thing to do is like looking for a single theory of how to decide what to believe.

The more details we learn about the chemical basis of life and the intricacy of the genetic code, the more unbelievable the standard historical account becomes

It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection.

Leading a human life is a full-time occupation, to which everyone devotes decades of intense concern.

The external view [of agency] forces itself on us at the same time that we resist it. One way this occurs is through the gradual erosion of what we do by the subtraction of what happens.

It isn't just that I don't believe in God, and naturally, hope there is no God. I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.

equally real at all stages of his life; specifically, the fact that a particular stage is present cannot be regarded as conferring on it any special status.

All good things vanish in less than a day, Peace, plenty, pleasure, suddenly decay Go not yet away, bright soul of the sad year, The earth is hell when you leav'st to appear.

As like a church and an ale-house, God and the devell, they manie times dwell neere to ether.

Blest is that government where no art thrives.

I've been writing about Vermont independence for nearly ten years... and, more often than not, it was for an audience of one.

People who never had enough thrift and forethought to buy and pay for property in the first place seldom have enough to keep property up after they have gained it in some other way.

In ourselvesIn our own honest hearts and chainless handsWill be our safeguard

It is a little thing to speak a phrase of common comfort, which by daily use has almost lost its sense; yet on the ear of him who thought to die unmourned it will fall like choicest music.

Gentleman is a term which does not apply to any station, but to the mind and the feelings in every station.