R.S. Thomas Quotes

I look at failure as the fertilizer to success.

In the first place I remark that no human law is perfect in its construction or execution.

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.

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.

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.

The wisdom of all religions has to be respected. The discoveries of science are also essential for our time and the future.

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.

Some of the recipes in the book have evolved for us. Many haven't.

Let those who thoughtfully consider the brevity of life remember the length of eternity.

In a way Australia is like Catholicism. The company is sometimes questionable and the landscape is grotesque. But you always come back.

My life shines with God's radiant blessings when my heart is the color of joy

The act of contributing to the lives of others is its own reward. A servant's heart is a greater motivator than financial gain.

History, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed.

As lovers of truth, we want to be close to it. Sometimes - evil thought, evil temptation - we want to be close to it by misleading others about its presence.

Seventy million books in America's libraries, but the one you want to read is always out.

Think of what would happen to us... if there were no humorists; life would be one long Congressional Record.

All problems exist in the absence of a good conversation.

What we do, as a conscious species, is set markers for ourselves. Once we reach one marker, we advance to the next.

I have died so little today, friend, forgive me.

Grief is the tax we pay on our attachments.

The joy of love is too short, and the sorrow thereof, and what cometh thereof, dureth over long.

The very purpose of a knight is to fight on behalf of a lady.

The constant effort towards population, which is found even in the most vicious societies, increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased.

It is a mere futile process to exchange one set of commodities for another, if the parties; after this new distribution of goods has taken place, are not better off than they were before.

The main peculiarity which distinguishes man from other animals is the means of his support - the power which he possesses of very greatly increasing these means.

It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will always be confirmed by experiment.

One must die to life in order to be utterly a creator.

A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own.

I stand between two worlds. I am at home in neither, and I suffer in consequence. You artists call me a bourgeois, and the bourgeois try to arrest me...I don't know which makes me feel worse.

What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.

The Freudian theory is one of the most important foundation stones for an edifice to be built by future generations, the dwelling of a freer and wiser humanity.

Zimbabwe is a lost country. There is no money in Zimbabwe, everything stands still. The economy of the country is in shambles, the inflation is the highest in this world.

Plato feels that ethical abstinences and austerities are essential preconditions for the cleansing and opening of the eye of the soul.

Children need continuity as they grow and learn.

Grace is not a strange, magic substance which is subtly filtered into our souls to act as a kind of spiritual penicillin. Grace is unity, oneness within ourselves, oneness with God.

Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by force from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves.

And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. it is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept.

Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God.

To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.

Take more time, cover less ground.

To worship our false selves is to worship nothing. And the worship of nothing is hell.

Contemplative living is living in true relationship with oneself, God, others and nature, free of the illusions of separateness.

While some men see ordinary happenings, others see divine light and guidance.

Our whole life is a meditation of our last decision - the only decision that matters.

It is true that we are called to create a better world. But we are first of all called to a more immediate and exalted task: that of creating our own lives.

To love our nothingness we must love everything in us that the proud man loves when he loves himself. But we must love it all for exactly the opposite reason.

The speech of God is silence. His Word is solitude.

The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.

The solution of the problem of life is life itself. Life is not attained by reason and analysis but first of all by living.

There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.