R.S. Thomas Quotes

Back at his chair he cannot remember what he was reading. He feels the books beside him to find the one that is warm.

The worm that destroys you is the temptation to agree with your critics, to get their approval.

Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down you'd treat if met where any bar is, or help to half-a-crown.

you are absolutely the most ethereal, least sensual woman I ever knew to exist without inhuman sexlessness.

This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don’t you think so?

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing alive enough to have strength to die. (from "Neutral Tones")

That one true heart was left behind! What feeling do we ever find, to equal among human kind , a dog's fidelity!

The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for a hundred years.

If an offense come out of the truth, better is it that the offense come than that the truth be concealed.

I may do some good before I am dead--be a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story.

Give the enemy not only a road for flight, but also a means of defending it.

I would say 95% of the time, because you just can't remember your lines if you're drinking alcohol. I would say about 95% of the time it was grape juice or this fake wine, which was horrible.

I love going to the feed store and drinking coffee and talking about how much rain we need.

Self-righteousness is the devil's masterpiece to make us think well of ourselves.

The created World is but a small Parenthesis in Eternity.

Religion is the mortar that binds society together; the granite pedestal of liberty; the strong backbone of the social system.

The still small voice of gratitude.

How shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves?

Obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good.

Alas, regardless of their doom, the little victims play! No sense have they of ills to come nor care beyond today.

It is we that are blind, not fortune.

I have loved my friends as I do virtue, my soul, my God.

Death hath a thousand doors to let out life. I shall find one.

Optimism is the last resort of those in deep despair. There can't be any optimists in heaven.

We are the sum total of our experiences.

I work in show business - there's nothing that shocks me anymore!

Those who live on vanity must, not unreasonably, expect to die of mortification.

Thou oughtest to be nice, even to Superstition, in keeping thy Promises; and therefore thou shouldst be equally cautious in making them.

A drinker has a hole under his nose that all his money runs into.

Fame is the echo of actions, resounding them to the world, save that the echo repeats only the last art, but fame relates all, and often more than all.

Great is the difference betwixt a man's being frightened at, and humbled for his sins.

The greatest proof that the Bible is inspired is that it has stood so much bad preaching.

Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.

We have all forgot more than we remember.

A man in passion rides a horse that runs away with him.

First get an absolute conquest over thyself, and then thou wilt easily govern thy wife.

Pride perceiving humility honorable, often borrows her cloak.

Though bachelors be the strongest stakes, married men are the best binders, in the hedge of the commonwealth.

resignation, perhaps the most stifling word in the language.

I had got to the dawn of the beautiful not caring, but fully aware, stage, which degenerates so imperceptibly into the doing something unpermissible stage.

I am unable, mentally incapable, of relating the dead thing, the broken body refusing to divulge why or where the occupant has gone, to the thing that was alive.

People for the American Way says it has yet to find anyone who has made a stronger case against the proposed school prayer Constitutional amendment... What kind of prayer would we use?

Eaten bread is forgotten.

Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.

In violent streets and broken homes, the cry of anguished souls is not for more laws but for more conscience and character.

If we want to produce people who share the values of a democratic culture, they must be taught those values and not be left to acquire them by chance.

My main purpose in life is to make money so I can afford to go on creating more inventions.

The endeavor to change universal power by selfish supplication I do not believe in.

Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world.

Most jobs are outsourced to the past, they aren't outsourced to India or Mexico or Pakistan or anywhere else.