R.S. Thomas Quotes

It is part of my creed that the only poetry is history, could we tell it right.

How shall we celebrate the day,When God appeared in mortal clay,The mark of worldly scorn;When the Archangel's heavenly Lays,Attempted the Redeemer's Praise,And hail'd Salvation's Morn!

Whenever there is authority, there is a natural inclination to disobedience.

Absurdities die of self-strangulation.

He who knows most believes the least.

The man's world must become a man's and a woman's world. Why are we afraid?

The man who can speak acceptably is usually given credit for an ability out of all proportion to what he really possesses.

The most baleful mischiefs may be expected from the unmanly conduct of not daring to face truth because it is unpleasing.

Be it remembered that we command nature, as it were, by obeying nature's laws; so the woman who would control her husband does so through obedience.

If you have a thrust to make at your friend's expense, do it gracefully, it is all the more effective. Some one says the reproach that is delivered with hat in hand is the most telling.

The month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit.

The happiness of every country depends upon the character of its people, rather than the form of its government.

For, as I suppose, no man in this world hath lived better than I have done, to achieve that I have done.

It's difficult to have any animosity towards someone if you recognize that on so many levels they're exactly the same as you.

Inspiration is being motivated by a person or idea. Motivation is being inspired by an object. When people are inspired, they don't need motivation.

We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.

Thou fool! Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom; that idle crag thou sittest on is six thousand years of age.

Two per cent. is genius, and ninety-eight per cent. is hard work.

His genius he was quite content in one brief sentence to define; Of inspiration one percent, of perspiration, ninety nine.

The money one gets for selling one's soul is always spent in deadening one's conscience, so the net gain at the end of a lifetime is no greater than if the diabolic bargain had not been struck.

Because I readily absorb ideas from every source - frequently starting where the last person left off - I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it.

Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness on the confines of two everlasting empires, - Necessity and Free Will.

Creation is great, and cannot be understood.

The impenetrable stupidity of Prince George (son-in-law of James II) served his turn. It was his habit, when any news was told him, to exclaim, "Est il possible?"-"Is it possible?"

I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away.

The dust of controversy is merely the falsehood flying off.

Sir, I have quarrelled with my wife; and a man who has quarrelled with his wife is absolved from all duty to his country.

Names are changed more readily than doctrines, and doctrines more readily than ceremonies.

The Orientals have another word for accident; it is "kismet,"--fate.

To hope is to risk frustration. Make up your mind to risk frustration.

God has brought me to Kentucky...the precise place he has chosen for my sanctification.

At 19, I basically held the position that if you were intellectually honest and really wanted to get in touch with political reality then you had to smell tear-gas.

A pretty wife is something for the fastidious vanity of a roue to retire upon.

Argentina and Brasil are both extremely good south american teams who'll play a central role at the worldcup.

Honest men are the soft easy cushions on which knaves repose and fatten.

Absence doth sharpen love, presence strengthens it.

Transnational terrorism, in the form of the Salafi Jihadist movement, is fundamentally a function of globalization.

Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must undertake to support it.

We repose an unwise confidence in any government, or in any men, when we invest them officially with too much, or an unnecessary quantity of, discretionary power.

It is easy to see that when republican virtue fails, slavery ensues.

Public money ought to be touched with the most scrupulous consciousness of honor.

The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.

...the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe or whether any.

We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.

War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end; it has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.

Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information.

A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation.

Public credit is suspicion asleep.

The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity, respecting the rights of man, is that they do not go far enough into antiquity.

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.