Top 39 R.S. Thomas Quotes
#1. The deep spaces between stars , Fathomless as the cold shadow His mind cast.
R.S. Thomas
#2. I have been Merlin wandering in the woods Of a far country, where the winds waken Unnatural voices , my mind broken By a sudden acquaintance with man's rage.
R.S. Thomas
#3. Now the power of the imagination is a unifying power, hence the force of metaphor; and the poet is the supreme manipulator of metaphor ... the world needs the unifying power of the imagination. The two things that give it best are poetry and religion.
R.S. Thomas
#4. Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer Said once about the long toil that goes like blood to the poems making? Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls, Limp as bindweed, if it break at all Life's iron crust Man, you must sweat And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build Your verse a ladder.
R.S. Thomas
#5. Ah, what balance is needed at the edges of such an abyss. I am left alone on the surface of a turning planet. What to do but, like Michelangelo 's Adam, put my hand out into unknown space, hoping for the reciprocating touch?
R.S. Thomas
#6. Even God had a Welsh name : He spoke to him in the old language; He was to have a peculiar care For the Welsh people. History showed us He was too big to be nailed to the wall Of a stone chapel, yet still we crammed him Between the boards of a black book .
R.S. Thomas
#7. They left no books , Memorial to their lonely thought In grey parishes: rather they wrote On men's hearts and in the minds Of young children sublime words Too soon forgotten. God in his time Or out of time will correct this.
R.S. Thomas
#8. The silence holds with its gloved hand the wild hawk of the mind.
R.S. Thomas
#9. I turn now not to the Bible but to Wallace Stevens
R.S. Thomas
#10. I have been all men known to history , Wondering at the world and at time passing; I have seen evil , and the light blessing Innocent love under a spring sky .
R.S. Thomas
#11. Deliver me from the long drought of the mind . Let leaves from the deciduous Cross fall on us, washing us clean, turning our autumn to gold by the affluence of their fountain.
R.S. Thomas
#12. There is always
laughter out of the speeding
vehicles for the man
who is still, half-way though he be
in a better direction.
R.S. Thomas
#13. To all light things
I compared her: to
a snowflake, a feather
R.S. Thomas
#14. I'm obviously not orthodox, I don't know how many real poets have ever been orthodox.
R.S. Thomas
#15. I have known exile and a wild passion Of longing changing to a cold ache. King, beggar and fool , I have been all by turns, Knowing the body's sweetness, the mind 's treason ; Taliesin still, I show you a new world , risen, Stubborn with beauty , out of the heart 's need .
R.S. Thomas
#16. The nearest we approach God ... is as creative beings. The poet , by echoing the primary imagination , recreates. Through his work he forces those who read him to do the same, thus bringing them ... nearer to the actual being of God as displayed in action .
R.S. Thomas
#17. Seated at table -
no need for the fracture
of the room's silence; noiselessly
they conversed.
R.S. Thomas
#18. I have nowhere to go. The swift satellites show The clock of my whole being is slow.
R.S. Thomas
#19. Is there a place here for the spirit ? Is there time on this brief platform for anything other than mind 's failure to explain itself?
R.S. Thomas
#21. Verse should be as natural As the small tuber that feeds on muck And grows slowly from obtuse soil To the white flower of immortal beauty
R.S. Thomas
#22. You have to imagine
a waiting that is not impatient
because it is timeless.
R.S. Thomas
#23. There are cries in the dark at night
As owls answer the moon
R.S. Thomas
#24. I am alone on the surface of a turning planet.
R.S. Thomas
#25. We live in our own world , A world that is too small For you to stoop and enter Even on hands and knees, The adult subterfuge.
R.S. Thomas
#26. Man is a dream about a shadow. But when some splendour falls upon him from God, a glory comes to him and his life is sweet.
R.S. Thomas
#27. Somewhere within sight of the tree of poetry that is eternity wearing the green leaves of time .
R.S. Thomas
#28. In the silence that is his chosen medium of communication and telling others about it in words. Is there no way not to be the sport of reason ?
R.S. Thomas
#29. A recurring ideal, I find, is that of simplicity. At times there comes the desire to write with great precision and clarity, words so simple and moving that they bring tears to the eyes.
R.S. Thomas
#30. Poetry is that / which arrives at the intellect / by way of the heart.
R.S. Thomas
#31. I am a man now. Pass your hand over my brow. You can feel the place where the brains grow.
R.S. Thomas
#32. Sunlight 's a thing that needs a window Before it enter a dark room. Windows don't happen. So two old poets, Hunched at their beer in the low haze Of an inn parlour, while the talk ran Noisily by them, glib with prose.
R.S. Thomas
#33. To live in Wales is to be conscious at dusk of the spilled blood that went into the making of the wild sky
R.S. Thomas
#34. Welsh poet R. S. Thomas often complained of having to go out and "perform cultural exceses on Saxon territory," the term he used for reading his poems to English sudiences.
R.S. Thomas
#35. Art is recuperation from time. I lie back convalescing upon the prospect of a harvest already at hand.
R.S. Thomas
#36. Imaginative truth is the most immediate way of presenting ultimate reality to a human being ... ultimate reality is what we call God.
R.S. Thomas
#37. The old men ask for more time; the young waste it. And the philosopher simply smiles, knowing there is none there.
R.S. Thomas
#38. It is too late to start For destinations not of the heart . I must stay here with my hurt.
R.S. Thomas
#39. The darkness is the deepening shadow of your presence; the silence a process in the metabolism of the being of love .
R.S. Thomas
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
