R.S. Thomas Quotes (58 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Neb [No-one] (1985)
Context: On seeing his shadow fall on such ancient rocks, he had to question himself in a different context and ask the same old question as before, "Who am I?", and the answer now came more emphatically than ever before, "No-one."
But a no-one with a crown of light about his head. He would remember a verse from Pindar: "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."

“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

The Penguin Book of Religious Verse (1963), p. 8

“It is alive. It is you,
God. Looking out I can see
no death.”

R.S. Thomas

"Alive", p. 51
Laboratories of the Spirit (1975)
Context: It is alive. It is you,
God. Looking out I can see
no death. The earth moves, the
sea moves, the wind goes
on its exuberant
journeys. Many creatures
reflect you, the flowers
your color, the tides the precision
of your calculations. There
is nothing too ample
for you to overflow, nothing
so small that your workmanship
is not revealed.

“Even God had a Welsh name:
He spoke to him in the old language”

R.S. Thomas

"A Welsh Testament"
Tares (1961)
Context: 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 Quotes about time

“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

"Taliesin 1952"
Song at the Year's Turning (1955)

“She is young. Have I the right
Even to name her? Child,
It is not love I offer
Your quick limbs, your eyes;
Only the barren homage
Of an old man whom time
Crucifies.”

R.S. Thomas

"The Dance"
Pietá (1966)

“I had looked forward
to old age as a time
of quietness, a time to draw
my horizons about me,
to watch memories ripening
in the sunlight of a walled garden.
But there is the void
over my head and the distance
within that the tireless signals
come from. And astronaut
on impossible journeys
to the far side of the self
I return with messages
I cannot decipher.”

R.S. Thomas

"The New Mariner", p. 99
Between Here and Now (1981)

“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

"Balance", p. 49
Frequencies (1978)

“Art is recuperation
from time. I lie back
convalescing upon the prospect
of a harvest already at hand.”

R.S. Thomas

"Pissaro: Kitchen Garden, Trees in Bloom", p. 41
Between Here and Now (1981)

“somewhere within sight
of the tree of poetry
that is eternity wearing
the green leaves of time.”

R.S. Thomas

"Prayer"
Later Poems (1983)

R.S. Thomas: Trending quotes

“Yet men sought us despite this.”

R.S. Thomas

"A Welsh Testament"
Tares (1961)
Context: Yet men sought us despite this.
My high cheek-bones, my length of skull
Drew them as to a rare portrait
By a dead master. I saw them stare
From their long cars, as I passed knee-deep
In ewes and wethers. I saw them stand
By the thorn hedges, watching me string
The far flocks on a shrill whistle.
And always there was their eyes; strong
Pressure on me: You are Welsh, they said;
Speak to us so; keep your fields free
Of the smell of petrol, the loud roar
Of hot tractors; we must have peace
And quietness.

Men

“I think that so much of our Christian beliefs … are an attempt to convey through language something which is unsayable.”

R.S. Thomas

"R. S. Thomas in conversation with Molly Price-Owen" in The David Jones Journal R. S. Thomas Special Issue (Summer/Autumn 2001)
Context: True Christianity at its most profound is as good as you get. … I think I've been lucky in the period which I've lived through because obviously I would have been for the chop in earlier days. The Inquisition would have rooted me out; even in the 19th century I would probably have been had up by a Bishop and asked to change my views, or to keep them to myself etc.... I think that so much of our Christian beliefs … are an attempt to convey through language something which is unsayable.

Thinking

“Any form of orthodoxy is just not part of a poet's province … A poet must be able to claim … freedom to follow the vision of poetry, the imaginative vision of poetry … And in any case, poetry is religion, religion is poetry.”

R.S. Thomas

R. S. Thomas : Priest and Poet, BBC TV (2 April 1972)
Context: Any form of orthodoxy is just not part of a poet's province … A poet must be able to claim … freedom to follow the vision of poetry, the imaginative vision of poetry … And in any case, poetry is religion, religion is poetry. The message of the New Testament is poetry. Christ was a poet, the New Testament is metaphor, the Resurrection is a metaphor; and I feel perfectly within my rights in approaching my whole vocation as priest and preacher as one who is to present poetry; and when I preach poetry I am preaching Christianity, and when one discusses Christianity one is discussing poetry in its imaginative aspects. … My work as a poet has to deal with the presentation of imaginative truth.

Religion , Imagination , Freedom , Parting

R.S. Thomas Quotes

“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

Books

“Man, you must sweat
And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build
Your verse a ladder.”

R.S. Thomas

"Poetry For Supper"
Poetry For Supper (1958)
Context: 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.

“True Christianity at its most profound is as good as you get. … I think I've been lucky in the period which I've lived through because obviously I would have been for the chop in earlier days.”

R.S. Thomas

Thinking

“You cannot find the centre
Where we dance, where we play,
Where life is still asleep
Under the closed flower,
Under the smooth shell
Of eggs in the cupped nest
That mock the faded blue
Of your remoter heaven.”

R.S. Thomas

"Children’s Song"
Song at the Year's Turning (1955)

Dance

“On seeing his shadow fall on such ancient rocks, he had to question himself in a different context and ask the same old question as before, "Who am I?", and the answer now came more emphatically than ever before, "No-one."”

R.S. Thomas

But a no-one with a crown of light about his head. He would remember a verse from Pindar: "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."
Neb [No-one] (1985)

Question , Light

“All right, I was Welsh. Does it matter?”

R.S. Thomas

"A Welsh Testament"
Tares (1961)
Context: All right, I was Welsh. Does it matter?
I spoke a tongue that was passed on
To me in the place I happened to be,
A place huddled between grey walls
Of cloud for at least half the year.
My word for heaven was not yours.
The word for hell had a sharp edge
Put on it by the hand of the wind
Honing, honing with a shrill sound
Day and night. Nothing that Glyn Dwr
Knew was armour against the rain's
Missiles. What was descent from him?

“Ah, what balance is needed at
the edges of such an abyss.”

R.S. Thomas

"Threshold", p. 110
Between Here and Now (1981)
Context: 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?