R.S. Thomas Quotes

Music furnishes a delightful recreation for the hours of respite from the cares of the day, and lasts us through life.

Devotion is a certain act of the will by which man gives himself promptly to divine service.

That paper money has some advantages is admitted. But that its abuses also are inevitable and, by breaking up the measure of value, makes a lottery of all private property, cannot be denied.

I have great confidence in the common sense of mankind in general.

And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and libraries of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them.

I join you therefore in branding as cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advances.

We discover in the gospels a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication .

Dispositions of the mind, like limbs of the body, acquire strength by exercise.

Very many and very meritorious were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that, will require unremitting vigilance.

Law is often the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.

The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

Excessive taxation . . . will carry reason & reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election.

Grace does not destroy nature, it perfects it.

The sovereign invigorator of the body is exercise, and of all the exercises walking is the best.

Civil officials have no business meddling in private religious affairs.

Men fight for freedom; then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.

Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.

It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers but by their distribution that good government is effected.

The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents.

The fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follow that, and in its turn wretchedness and oppression.

A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free.

We are the friends of liberty everywhere, but the guarrantors of only our own.

Of all the cankers of human happiness none corrodes with so silent, yet so baneful an influence, as indolence.

It is every Americans' right and obligation to read and interpret the Constitution for himself.

A man does not always choose what his guardian angel intends.

Do you want to succeed? Then, double you rate of failure. Success lies on the far side of failure.

The great accomplishments of man have resulted from the transmission of ideas and enthusiasm.

There was a danger that skeptics and opponents would misread those likelihood ratio tests as rejections of an entire class of models, which of course they were not.

Nothing can be more incorrect than the assumption one sometimes meets with, that physics has one method, chemistry another, and biology a third.

Every cell in us worships God.

To persons uninstructed in natural history, their country or seaside stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.

Friendship involves many things but, above all the power of going outside oneself and appreciating what is noble and loving in another.

The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.

In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.

The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, at any time, free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction.

Hell is where everyone is doing his own thing. Paradise is where everyone is doing God's thing.

The biggest bore of all is he who is overflowing with congratulations

But evil is wrought by want of thought, As well as want of heart!

A good conscience and a good confidence go together.

It was not in the winter Our loving lot was cast! It was the time of roses, We plucked them as we passed!

Sweet are the little brooks that run O'er pebbles glancing in the sun, Singing in soothing tones.

It is many times with a fraudulent Design that men stick their corrupt Doctrine with the Cloves of other mens Wit.

Charity brings to life again those who are spiritually dead.

God sees us in secret, therefore, let, us seek his face in secret. Though heaven be God's palace, yet it is not his prison.

For all laws are general judgements, or sentences of the legislator; as also every particular judgement is a law to him whose case is judged.

Intemperance is naturally punished with diseases; rashness, with mischance; injustice; with violence of enemies; pride, with ruin; cowardice, with oppression; and rebellion, with slaughter.

The Register of Knowledge of Fact is called History .

Do not that to another, which thou wouldst not have done to thyself.

Ignorance of the law is no good excuse, where every man is bound to take notice of the laws to which he is subject.

What is ambition but desire of greatness? And what is greatness but extent of power?