R.S. Thomas Quotes

Action is the stream, and contemplation is the spring.

As much success came to him, my father stayed true to his promise. He built the hospital to help the most helpless children with catastrophic illnesses.

All authority belongs to the people... In questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief with chains of the Constitution.

We do not fear being called meticulous, inclining as we do to the view that only the exhaustive can be truly interesting.

There is a necessity for a regulating discipline of exercise that, whilst evoking the human energies, will not suffer them to be wasted.

Guantanamo Bay is the anti-Statue of Liberty.

My mother introduced me to many different things, and figure skating was one of them. I just thought that it was magical having to glide across the ice.

Rich with the spoils of nature.

Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.

You must keep your composure. Take charge of the huddle. Be a leader. And silence, the crowd.

War...is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.

The highest perfection of human life consists in the mind of man being detached from care, for the sake of God.

What you envision in your mind, how you see yourself, and how you envision the world around you is of great importance because those things become your focus.

Let this be thy whole endeavor, this thy prayer, this thy desire,-that thou mayest be stripped of all selfishness, and with entire simplicity follow Jesus only.

The man who doesn’t make up his mind to cultivate the habit of thinking misses the greatest pleasure in life.

Those who don’t read the newspapers are better off than those who do insofar as those who know nothing are better off than those whose heads are filled with half-truths and lies.

What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises.

Success is based on imagination plus ambition and the will to work.

No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty. Good men will obey the last, but bad ones the former only. If our government ever fails, it will be from this weakness.

Life is not accomplishing some special work but attaining to a degree of consciousness and inner freedom which is beyond all works and attainments.

The only thing that hurts more than paying an income tax is not having to pay an income tax.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

Teach me to live, that I may dread The grave as little as my bed. Teach me to die.

For if one link in nature's chain might be lost, another might be lost, until the whole of things will vanish by piecemeal.

Every day you say 'No' to your dreams, you might be pushing back your dreams a whole 6 months

The strength of the Constitution, lies in the will of the people to defend it.

The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time.

Stop looking for permission to pursue your dreams! They are YOUR dreams and you don't need a co-signer to chase them!

Out of the sighs a little comes, But not of grief, for I have knocked down that Before the agony; the spirit grows, Forgets, and cries; A little comes, is tasted and found good.

You cannot have well people on a sick planet.

If you are not where you want to be DO NOT QUIT, instead reinvent yourself and change your habits.

In our totality we are born of the Earth. Our spirituality itself is earth-derived... If there is no spirituality in the earth, then there is no spirituality in ourselves

My writing has a lot to do with who I am, and what my life is like, and my relationships to people.

I am always looking for that nuance, that moment of truth, and you can't really do that fast.

I grew up with a Christmas tree, I'm going to stay with a Christmas tree.

If there be no enemy there's no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.

When logics die, The secret of the soil grows through the eye, And blood jumps in the sun; Above the waste allotments the dawn halts.

Never put off your massage until tomorrow if you can get it today.

The spiritual is the parent of the practical.

Idleness begets ennui, ennui the hypochondriac, and that a diseased body. No laborious person was ever yet hysterical.

The goal of fasting is inner unity.

There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality.

Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infinitely more advantage than any victory with all its expence.

Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.

The declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children is contrary to every principle of moral justice.

I certainly agree that capital is not a one-dimensional object, and that the return on capital takes very different forms for different assets or different people.

Refusing to deal with numbers rarely serves the interests of the least well-off.

Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do.

Death had to take Roosevelt sleeping, for if he had been awake, there would have been a fight.

Only the inner vision of God, only the God-blindedness of unreservedly dedicated souls, only the utterly humble ones can bow and break the raging pride of a power-mad world.