R.S. Thomas Quotes

I never go straight to the point if I can go the most difficult way. Why be simple when you can be complicated?

I like the idea that I'm making things that people might think and argue about.

Is not light grander than fire?

Even though I am nearly deaf, I seem to be gifted with a kind of inner hearing which enables me to detect sounds and noises which the ordinary person does not hear.

There is no limit to which a man will not go to avoid thinking.

We all come in different shapes and sizes, and that's fine by me.

Of a truth, men are mystically united: a mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.

Good breeding differs, if at all, from high breeding only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights.

The great trouble is that the preachers get the children from six to seven years of age and then it is almost impossible to do anything with them.

There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start a new.

What is a college? An institute of learning. What is a business? An institute of learning. Life, itself, is an institute of learning.

Christians often threaten atheists with eternal torture. But if we say that they're delusional, they will tell us that we're being rude.

The essence of Christianity, as I see it, is love. The essence of Humanism (and I'm also a Humanist) is love. At that level, we're not far apart.

If you want to get somewhere in six months, you're not going to get there by wishing it.

I wish someone would have told me that, just because I'm a girl, I don't have to get married.

Personally, I think they killed the bear because they were afraid of it. That s what people do, kill the things they re afraid of.

A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.

A man cannot make a pair of shoes rightly unless he do it in a devout manner.

Classical music is a wonderful 1200 year-old tradition that witnesses everything that it has meant and what it means right now to be human.

The whole path of American music has been so much about the recognition of stylistic diversity, and the recognition of the importance of music which was from one of the vernacular traditions.

I think music needs to be presented in a way so that kids can grasp songs, dances, simple music that's associated with some particular defining moment in human experience.

I'm using the grid as formation. I wanted a relationship between the paintings and videos so that way when you are looking at the videos there's a direct relationship to the paintings.

I always get more applause than votes.

All our rulers have said that war is unthinkable, and then we think about it almost all the time. We've got to make it unthinkable.

I've never been a fan of whimsical or confusing storytelling.

Men do less than they ought, unless they do all they can.

Of course, I'm no dummy.

For every new mouth to feed, there are two hands to produce.

When eight row together with swing the boat becomes the ninth rower.

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

The Orator persuades and carries all with him, he knows not how; the Rhetorician can prove that he ought to have persuaded and carried all with him.

I do not believe in the God of the theologians; but that there is a Supreme Intelligence I do not doubt.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

What we learned here is love tastes bitter when it's gone.

I would like it to be certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls!

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.

A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.

The latest gospel in this world is, know thy work and do it.

He is wise who can instruct us and assist us in the business of virtuous living.

The brain can be developed just the same as the muscles can be developed, if on will only take the pains to train the mind to think.

All greatness is unconscious, or it is little and naught.

Terror itself, when once grown transcendental, becomes a kind of courage; as frost sufficiently intense, according to the poet Milton, will burn.

All men, if they work not as in the great taskmaster's eye, will work wrong, and work unhappily for themselves and for you.

Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.

All true work is sacred. In all true work, were it but true hand work, there is something of divineness. Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in Heaven.

If we live in peace ourselves, we in turn may bring peace to others. A peaceable man does more good than a learned one.

I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am.

Do not interfere when your opinion is not sought.

"Love is not altogether a Delirium," says he elsewhere; "yet has it many points in common therewith."