R. S. Thomas Quotes

Poetry is that / which arrives at the intellect / by way of the heart.

The silence holds with its gloved hand the wild hawk of the mind.

The old men ask for more time; the young waste it. And the philosopher simply smiles, knowing there is none there.

To live in Wales is to be conscious at dusk of the spilled blood that went into the making of the wild sky

The meaning is in the waiting.

I have seen the sun break through to illuminate a small field for a while, and gone my way and forgotten it. But that was the pearl of great price, the one field that had treasure in it. I realize now that I must give all that I have to possess it. Life is not hurrying on to a receeding future, nor hankering after an imagined past. It is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush, to a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

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?

You have to imagine a waiting that is not impatient because it is timeless.

Imaginative truth is the most immediate way of presenting ultimate reality to a human being... ultimate reality is what we call God.

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.

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

I am left alone on the surface of a turning planet.

The furies are at home in the mirror; it is their address. Even the clearest water, if deep enough can drown. Never think to surprise them. Your face approaching ever so friendly is the white flag they ignore. There is no truce with the furies. A mirror's temperature is always zero. It is ice in the veins. It's camera is an x-ray. It is a chalice held out to you in silent communion, where gaspingly you partake of a shifting identity never your own.

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.

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.

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 .

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 .

I'm obviously not orthodox, I don't know how many real poets have ever been orthodox.