R.S. Thomas Quotes

Philosophy is the childhood of the intellect, and a culture that tries to skip it will never grow up.

To express gratitude is gracious and honorable, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live with gratitude ever in our hearts is to touch heaven.

I am so old that I can remember when liberals were liberal - instead of being intolerant of anything and anybody that is not politically correct.

The welfare state has always been judged by its good intentions, rather than its bad results.

Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into the nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.

The nature of light is a subject of no material importance to the concerns of life or to the practice of the arts, but it is in many other respects extremely interesting.

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.

Restlessness is discontent and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.

To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin.

Purity and simplicity are the two wings with which man soars above the earth and all temporary nature.

Though lovers be lost love shall not.

You have to think about whether that Mercedes-Benz you have is actually worth how much it costs to you.

The real use of gunpowder is to make all men tall.

My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!

Democracy is 51% of the people taking away the rights of the other 49%.

Experience is the best of school masters, only the school fees are heavy.

Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness.

No power on earth is greater than a mind and soul reawakened. Our Constitution begins we the people, not us the government.

My inspiration is my hometown.

It really bugs me that someone will tell me, after I spent 20 years being educated, how I'm supposed to think.

Diversity is the magic. It is the first manifestation, the first beginning of the differentiation of a thing and of simple identity. The greater the diversity, the greater the perfection.

I believe in New Yorkers. Whether they’ve ever questioned the dream in which they live, I wouldn’t know, because I won’t ever dare ask that question.

Though they go mad they shall be sane, though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; though lovers be lost love shall not; and death shall have no dominion.

Good education is not regeneration. Education may chain up men's lusts, but cannot change their hearts.

An absolutely new idea is one of the rarest things known to man.

We want capitalism and market forces to be the slave of democracy rather than the opposite.

It’s not enough to wish, it’s not enough to dream, it’s not enough to promise. We must do.

There are 3 questions that would destroy most of the arguments of the Left. The first is - compared to what? The second is - at what cost? And the third is - what hard evidence do you have?

When I was a boy, I thought myself a man. Now that I am a man, I find myself a boy.

I confess it is beyond our power to awaken the heart, but ordinarily this way does good.

The secret of a good life is to have the right loyalties and hold them in the right scale of values.

My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.

The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.

Affliction doth not rise out of the dust or come to men by chance; but it is the Lord that sends it, and we should own and reverence His hand in it.

Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous. . . .

Every judgement of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins.

Clearly the person who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the Church teaches.

Glory in nothing, but only in this, that you are in Christ. For God chose you in him; the being you had was in him before the world was.

He that will play with Satan's bait, will quickly be taken with Satan's hook.

I love being around people who work with their hands, who do the hard things to keep our country going. They're just my kind of people.

Love feels no burden, regards not labors, strives toward more than it attains, argues not of impossibility, since it believes that it may and can do all things.

Necessity dispenseth with decorum.

The world is a great mirror. It reflects back to you what you are.

"Be yourself" is about the worst advice you can give some people.

The greatest calamity which could befall us would be submission to a government of unlimited powers.

Humility is the forgetfulness of self.

None know how often the hand of God is seen in a wilderness but them that rove it for a man's life.

It's important to realize that innovation and growth in itself are not sufficient to moderate inequality of wealth.