“Blessings, Stevens;
I stand with my back to grammar
At an altar you never aspired
to, celebrating the sacrament
of the imagination whose high-priest
notwithstanding you are.”
"Homage to Wallace Stevens"
No Truce with the Furies (1995)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
R.S. Thomas 58
Welsh poet 1913–2000Related quotes
Serving “a double calling” as a priest and Navy chaplain https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/07/12/serving-a-double-calling-as-a-priest-and-navy-chaplain/ (July 12, 2020)
Epithalamion, line 223; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
As quoted in Wyclif, by Anthony Kenny, p. 90. (1985) published by Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-287646-5
(Quotes from an interview conducted in 2001, broadcast on Fijian television partially on 30 April 2001, and fully on 29 April 2004).
Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
"Trefusis Blasphemes" radio broadcast, as published in Paperweight (1993)
1990s
Context: I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance. That is my religion, and every day I am sorely, grossly, heinously and deeply offended, wounded, mortified and injured by a thousand different blasphemies against it. When the fundamental canons of truth, honesty, compassion and decency are hourly assaulted by fatuous bishops, pompous, illiberal and ignorant priests, politicians and prelates, sanctimonious censors, self-appointed moralists and busy-bodies, what recourse of ancient laws have I? None whatever. Nor would I ask for any. For unlike these blistering imbeciles my belief in my religion is strong and I know that lies will always fail and indecency and intolerance will always perish.
Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential
Source: Letter to his daughter (1978), p. 15.
Context: What gift can I give you from this cell out of which my hand cannot pass? I give you the hand of the people. What celebration can I hold for you? I give you the celebration of a celebrated memory and a celebrated name. You are the heir to and inheritor of the most ancient civilization. Please make your full contribution to making this ancient civilization the most progressive and the most powerful. By progressive and powerful I do not mean the most dreaded. A dreaded society is not a civilized society. The most progressive and powerful society in the civilized sense, is a society which has recognized its ethos, and come to terms with the past and the present, with religion and science, with modernism and mysticism, with materialism and spirituality; a society free of tension, a society rich in culture. Such a society cannot come with hocus-pocus formulas and with fraud. It has to flow from the depth of a divine search. In other words, a classless society has to emerge but not necessarily a Marxist society. The Marxist society has created its own class structure.