R.S. Thomas Quotes

We need not be afraid of the future, for the future will be in our own hands.

What else does anxiety about the future bring you but sorrow upon sorrow?

I should not really object to dying were it not followed by death.

For a lot of people, poetry tends to be dull. It's not read much. It takes a special kind of training and a lot of practice to read poetry with pleasure. It's like learning to like asparagus.

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

Is a woman a thinking unit at all, or a fraction always wanting its integer?

All men desire peace, but very few desire those things that make for peace.

The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun.

Innate in nearly every artistic nature is a wanton, treacherous penchant for accepting injustice when it creates beauty and showing sympathy for and paying homage to aristocratic privilege.

What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. What is the soul? It is immaterial.

Never love unless you can bear with all the faults of man!

Love follows knowledge.

The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.

War consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known.

Desire of praise disposeth to laudable actions.

The disembodied spirit is immortal; there is nothing of it that can grow old or die. But the embodied spirit sees death on the horizon as soon as its day dawns.

The Christian life, and especially the contemplative life, is a continual discovery of Christ in new and unexpected places.

No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute Knowledge of Fact.

Oh, how great peace and quietness would he possess who should cut off all vain anxiety and place all his confidence in God.

Whilst breezy waves toss up their silvery spray.

Grant me prudently to avoid him that flatters me, and to endure patiently him that contradicts me.

How should thy patience be crowned in heaven if none adversity should befall to thee in earth? If thou wilt suffer none adversity how mayest thou be the friend of Christ?

All His glory and beauty come from within, and there He delights to dwell, His visits there are frequent, His conversation sweet, His comforts refreshing; and His peace passing all understanding.

The lily is all in white, like a saint, And so is no mate for me.

Remember there's always a voice saying the right thing to you somewhere if you'll only listen for it.

Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of good wine.

I'd rather have an ape for an ancestor than a bishop.

Action is the catalyst that creates accomplishments. It is the path that takes us from uncrafted hopes to realized dreams.

A man full of hope will be full of action.

A man that is well ordered in his soul needeth little the unkind demeanor of worldly people nor yet their proud behavior.

This is something essential to art: reception is never its goal. What counts for me is that my work provides material to reflect upon. Reflection is an activity.

For me to be a saint means to be myself.

Stop a moment, cease your work, and look around you.

History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.

All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.

You cannot be a man of faith unless you know how to doubt.

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.

Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.

Our minds are like crows. They pick up everything that glitters, no matter how uncomfortable our nests get with all that metal in them.

Did you ever think, Clarice, why the Philistines don't understand you? It's because you are the answer to Samson's riddle. You are the honey in the lion.

Wealth is what you accumulate, not what you spend.

The meaning of life is found in openness to being and "being present" in full awareness.

What we have to be is what we are.

When comfort is withdrawn, do not be cast down, but humbly and patiently await the visitation of God. He is able and powerful to give you more grace and more spiritual comfort than you first had.

He is truly great who hath a great charity.

The smaller your reality, the more convinced you are that you know everything.

[An] act of the Congress of the United States... which assumes powers... not delegated by the Constitution, is not law, but is altogether void and of no force.

The result of your fifty or sixty years of religious reading in the four words: 'Be just and good,' is that in which all our enquiries must end.

I am the family face; flesh perishes, I live on.

What we learn to do, we learn by doing.