R.S. Thomas Quotes

The only time I really become discouraged is when I think of all the things I would like to do and the little time I have in which to do them.

We owe our lives to the sun... How is it, then, that we feel no gratitude?

This problem, once solved, will be simple.

It is through symbols that man consciously or unconsciously lives, works and has his being.

When I have fully decided that a result is worth getting I go ahead of it and make trial after trial until it comes.

Clean air is a basic right. The responsibility to ensure that falls to Congress and the president.

The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes.

There are no woman composers, never have been and possibly never will be.

What we sow in youth we reap in age; the seed of the thistle always produces the thistle.

A musicologist is a man who can read music but cannot hear it.

Our most important legacy will be the contributions we make to the lives of other human beings.

But in practice Australia - the pluralism of Australia - sorry the sectarianism to an extent stopped at the time you took your uniform off after coming home from school.

All of living is nothing but a fervid attempt to move closer together.

All that is literature seeks to communicate power

Good food is a good trend.

A horrid alcoholic explosion scatters all my good intentions like bits of limbs and clothes over the doorsteps and into the saloon bars of the tawdriest pubs.

... an ugly, lovely town ... crawling, sprawling ... by the side of a long and splendid curving shore. This sea-town was my world.

[The Federal Convention] is really an assembly of demigods.

Do you know what my favorite renewable fuel is? An ecosystem for innovation.

I once worked with Emma Thompsons mother, Phyllida Law. I worked with her on a BBC drama, and she was hilarious. I loved her so much, and she was great to work with.

We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed.

Good clothes open all doors.

Me I never had the chance to say,Well,I'm going to do something I want to do."I always did if for my family,for my children, for my father,for my mother."

The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

God is as just as he is merciful.

Men will believe anything at all provided they are under no obligation to believe it.

To each his suff'rings: all are men, / Condemn'd alike to groan, / The tender for another's pain; / Th' unfeeling for his own.

The biggest hindrance to the missionary task is self. Self that refuses to die. Self that refuses to sacrifice. Self that refuses to give. Self that refuses to go.

Peace is the work of justice indirectly, in so far as justice removes the obstacles to peace; but it is the work of charity (love) directly, since charity, according to its very notion, causes peace.

While the farmer holds the title to the land, actually, it belongs to all the people because civilization itself rests upon the soil.

A mind always employed is always happy.

Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.

The sovereignty of God is that golden sceptre in his hand by which he will make all bow, either by his word or by his works, by his mercies or by his judgements.

There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.

I have not observed mens honesty to increase with their riches.

I believe the states can best govern our home concerns, and the general government our foreign ones.

When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality.

Faith is the champion of Grace, and Love the nurse; but Humility is the beauty of Grace.

The liberty of speaking and writing guards our other liberties.

Good health, longevity, happiness, a loving family, self-reliance, fine friends … if you [have] five, you’re a rich man….

What would become of the garden if the gardener treated all the weeds and slugs and birds and trespassers as he would like to be treated, if he were in their place?

There is more evil in the least sin than in the greatest affliction.

Friends depart, and memory takes them To her caverns, pure and deep.

Life is meaningless only if we allow it to be. Each of us has the power to give life meaning, to make our time and our bodies and our words into instruments of love and hope.

At the root of everything I do is a fascination with ideas – what ideas are for, what jobs they do.

If there is anything in the world which I do firmly believe in, it is the universal validity of the law of causation.

I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.

It is possible to live for the next life and still be merry in this.

Altruism itself depends on a recognition of the reality of other persons, and on the equivalent capacity to regard oneself as merely one individual among many.

That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not.