R.S. Thomas Quotes

And the worst possible thing we could know — worse than knowing of our descent from a mass of microorganisms — is that we are nobodies not somebodies, puppets not people.

The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.

Obligation is thraldom, and thraldom is hateful.

A failure teaches you that something can't be done-that way.

A lifestyle is what you pay for; a life is what pays you.

Movement isn't progress.

Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the passions, but regulates them.

Elgar's first symphony is the musical equivalent of St Pancras Railway Station.

That sorrow for sin that keeps the soul from looking towards the mercy seat is a sinful sorrow.

Only about half of all commercials actually work.

It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.

No brain is stronger than its weakest think.

Not far from the invention of fire we must rank the invention of doubt.

Nothing is too small a subject for prayer, because nothing is too small to be the subject of God's care.

It sounds paradoxical to say the attainment of scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, by the help of scientific errors.

The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.

I'm a liberal, I was born a liberal, I'll be one 'til I die, what else should a reporter be when you see so much and when we have such great privilege and access to the truth?

I never failed once. It just happened to be a 2000-step process.

I am 67, but I'm not too old to make a fresh start.

I'm not anti-Jewish; I'm anti-Zionist.

You cannot have a democracy without an informed people.

We Can Only Exist By Taking Our Minds Off The Fact That We Exist

What labor and pains worldlings take to obtain the vain things of this life-to obtain the poor things of this world, which are but shadows and dreams, and mere nothings!

As the body lives by breathing, so the soul lives by believing.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

Somewhere out there is a unique place for you to help others - a unique life role for you to fill that only you can fill.

I learned very quickly that to be angry about something does not mean anybody's gonna listen to you.

I have seen the hippopotamus, both asleep and awake; and I can assure you that, awake or asleep, he is the ugliest of the works of God.

I always try to overachieve. I feel I have something to prove every day.

It's hard... to shake off something that's already under your skin.

The reflections on a day well spent furnish us with joys more pleasing than ten thousand triumphs.

Down in adoration falling, Lo! the sacred Host we hail; Lo! o'er ancient forms departing, Newer rites of grace prevail; Faith for all defects supplying, Where the feeble senses fail.

Pray thee, spare, thyself at times: for it becomes a wise man sometimes to relax the high pressure of his attention to work.

Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance - the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it; better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.

Conflict can be seen as a gift of energy, in which neither side loses and a new dance is created.

A people without a language of its own is only half a nation. A nation should guard its language more than its territories, 'tis a surer barrier and a more important frontier than mountain or river.

Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Fierce sectarianism breeds fierce latitudinarianism.

Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.

The proper effect of the Eucharist is the transformation of man into God.

An image is always only showing what's necessary for a thought, not the thought itself.

Sometimes doing nothing is doing something.

Of two evils, choose the more interesting.

Judge not a man by his clothes, but by his wife's clothes.

I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.

The book is there for inspiration and as a foundation, the fundamentals on which to build.

What a wonderful phenomenon it is, carefully considered, when the human eye, that jewel of organic structures, concentrates its moist brilliance on another human creature!

Scenes are now to take place as will open the eyes of credulity and of insanity itself, to the dangers of a paper medium abandoned to the discretion of avarice and of swindlers.

Bank-paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs.