R.S. Thomas Quotes
The act of contributing to the lives of others is its own reward. A servant's heart is a greater motivator than financial gain.
In a way Australia is like Catholicism. The company is sometimes questionable and the landscape is grotesque. But you always come back.
I did not want to be anything, and naturally I did not want to turn myself into a mere profession: all I ever wanted was to be myself.
Everyone, he went on, speaks a language he does not understand, but which now and then is understood by others. That is enough to permit one to exist and at least to be misunderstood.
By poetry we mean the art of employing of words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination; the art of doing by means of words, what the painter does by means of colors.
Once you understand the foundations of cooking - whatever kind you like, whether it's French or Italian or Japanese - you really don't need a cookbook anymore.
The wisdom of all religions has to be respected. The discoveries of science are also essential for our time and the future.
Union with God is really possible. Unity with God I presume, is what is meant by Heaven, but that too is available in this life for the humble of heart.
Science and technology has tried to offer an alternative to religion by making a god out of human reason, but that didn't work out too well.
The school-room sends men to the Legislature, to the bench, and the executive office. The bar-room sends them to the scaffold and hell.
In the first place I remark that no human law is perfect in its construction or execution.
Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.
All men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.
The last hope of human liberty in this world rests on us. we ought, for so dear a stake, to sacrifice every attachment & every enmity.
The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture. --The Fruit Hunters
An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.
The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.
Everything is integral and interacts with everything else. This means that nothing is itself without everything else. There is a commonality, an integrity, an intimacy of the universe with itself.
No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.
What proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one,--and that is not only true, but identical,--that men always act from self-interest.
The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries.
Once you adopt and communicate a quality policy, stick with it, live it, and protect it. You get only one chance!
The excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of those to be governed by it.
the qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. they are the result of habit and long training.
The heart of grief, its most difficult challenge, is not "letting go" of those who have died but instead making the transition from loving in presence to loving in separation.
I am tired of a life of contention, and of being the personal object for the hatred of every man, who hates the present state of things.
Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there government ends; the law of the strongest takes its place, and life and property are his who can take them.
It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one.
God will not pity them, but “laugh at their calamity.” The blessed company in heaven shall rejoice in the execution of God's righteous judgment, and sing while the smoke riseth up for ever.
The happiness of the domestic fireside is the first boon of Heaven; and it is well it is so, since it is that which is the lot of the mass of mankind.
When is the last time government admitted it might have made a mistake and canceled a program?
The happiest moments my heart knows are those in which it is pouring forth its affections to a few esteemed characters.
The eyes of our citizens are not sufficiently open to the true cause of our distress. They ascribe them to everything but their true cause, the banking system
The physician is happy in the attachment of the families in which he practices. All think he has saved one of them, and he finds himself everywhere a welcome guest, a home in every house.
Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the General Government.
Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.
God should not be called an individual substance, since the principle of individuation is matter.
