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R. S. Thomas Quotes

1913–2000 United Kingdom

Ronald Stuart Thomas (29 March 1913 – 25 September 2000), published as R. S.

United Kingdom
Poets

Also known as: R S Thomas

Random R. S. Thomas quote

54 quotes

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

Between Here and Now (1981)

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

The deep spaces between stars,
Fathomless as the cold shadow
His mind cast.

The Bread of Truth (1963)

The darkness
is the deepening shadow
of your presence; the silence a
process in the metabolism
of the being of love.

Laboratories of the Spirit (1975)

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

Laboratories of the Spirit (1975)

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.

Song at the Year's Turning (1955)

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

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)

Life is not hurrying
on to a receding 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.

Laboratories of the Spirit (1975)

I am like a tree,
From my top boughs I can see
The footprints that led up to me.

Tares (1961)

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

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.

Song at the Year's Turning (1955)

He arose, pacing the floor
Strewn with books, his mind big with the poem
Soon to be born, his nerves tense to endure
The long torture of delayed birth.

Song at the Year's Turning (1955)

It is too late to start
For destinations not of the heart.
I must stay here with my hurt.

Tares (1961)

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.

Song at the Year's Turning (1955)

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

Poetry For Supper (1958)

A poet must be able to claim … freedom to follow the vision of poetry, the imaginative vision of poetry.

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

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.

Selected Prose (1995)

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?

Frequencies (1978)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: R. S. Thomas (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.