R.S. Thomas Quotes
O blessed Saviour, give me grace like Thee, to make Religion my first, and chiefest care, and devoutly to observe, all solemn times, and all holy Rites, which relate to Thy worship.
Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.
I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.
Prostitution in the towns is like the cesspool in the palace; take away the cesspool and the palace will become an unclean and evil smelling-place.
I never can understand how anyone can not smoke it deprives a man of the best part of life. With a good cigar in his mouth a man is perfectly safe, nothing can touch him, literally.
Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.
The wise know too well their weakness to assume infallibility; and he who knows most knows best how little he knows.
I answer that, Even, as in the blessed in heaven there will be most perfect charity, so in the damned there will be the most perfect hate.
To see everything in God and to see God in everything normally takes a lifetime of practice.
Ah, believer, it is only Heaven that is above all winds, storms, and tempests; God did not cast man out of Paradise that he might find another paradise in this world.
Law has the power to compel: indeed, the ability to enforce is a condition of the ability to command.
The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.
Spring, the sweet spring, is the year's pleasant king; Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring, Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing. Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!
Beauty is but a flower Which wrinkles will devour; Brightness falls from the air; Queens have died young and fair; Dust hath closed Helen's eye.
Beware the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry.
It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.
A single legislature, on account of the superabundance of its power, and the uncontrolled rabidity of its execution, becomes as dangerous to the principles of liberty as that of a despotic monarch.
The typical minimum wage earner is a provider and a breadwinner - most likely a woman - responsible for paying bills, running a household and raising children.
Never bend the rules. You bend the rules a little bit and then it's a slippery slope.
The battle for self-discipline may leave you a bit bruised and battered but always a better person.
God’s love is there for you whether or not you feel you deserve love. It is simply always there.
Wise men wrote the Constitution, but clever judges have been destroying it, bit by bit, turning it into an instrument of arbitrary judicial power, instead of a limitation on all government power.
It is truly a triumph of rhetoric over reality when people can believe that going into politics is 'public service,' but that producing food, shelter, transportation, or medical care is not.
Much of what sophisticates loftily refer to as the "complexityof the real world is in fact the inconsistency in their own minds.
The only thing better than "hands-on" experience is hands-off experience - enough experience to understand that some things will turn out better if left alone.
It is easier to do one's duty to others than to one's self. If you do your duty to others, you are considered reliable. If you do your duty to yourself, you are considered selfish.
Men are rewarded or punished not for what they do but for how their acts are defined. That is why men are more interested in better justifying themselves than in better behaving themselves.
A spiritual prayer is a humble prayer. Prayer is the asking of an alms, which requires humility... The lower the heart descends, the higher the prayer ascends.
How soon are we broken on the soft pillow of ease! Adam in paradise was overcome, when Job on the dunghill was a conqueror.
Repentance is a grace of God's Spirit whereby a sinner is inwardly humbled and visibly reformed.
To be in Christ -that is redemption; but for Christ to be in you-that is sanctification.
Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love. It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.
The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.
Racism does not have a good track record. It's been tried out for a long time and you'd think by now we'd want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management.
