R. S. Thomas quotes

R. S. Thomas was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest, renowned for his deeply spiritual and evocative poetry about rural Wales. His work explores themes of faith, nature, and the struggles of Welsh identity. He became one of the most prominent figures in modern Welsh literature. Here are 63 of his quotes:

I'm obviously not orthodox, I don't know how many real poets have ever been orthodox. (R. S. Thomas)
somewhere within sight of the tree of poetry that is eternity wearing the green leaves of time. View quote
R. S. Thomas
"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. View quote
R. S. Thomas
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. View quote
R. S. Thomas
The deep spaces between stars, Fathomless as the cold shadow His mind cast. View quote
R. S. Thomas
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? View quote
R. S. Thomas
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. View quote
R. S. Thomas
I turn now not to the Bible but to Wallace Stevens. View quote
R. S. Thomas
I have nowhere to go. The swift satellites show The clock of my whole being is slow. View quote
R. S. Thomas
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. View quote
R. S. Thomas
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)
It is too late to start For destinations not of the heart. I must stay here with my hurt. View quote
R. S. Thomas
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. View quote
R. S. Thomas
I am a man now. Pass your hand over my brow. You can feel the place where the brains grow. View quote
R. S. Thomas
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. View quote
R. S. Thomas
The darkness is the deepening shadow of your presence; the silence a process in the metabolism of the being of love. View quote
R. S. Thomas
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. View quote
R. S. Thomas
You have to imagine a waiting that is not impatient because it is timeless. View quote
R. S. Thomas
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. View quote
R. S. Thomas
Imaginative truth is the most immediate way of presenting ultimate reality to a human being ... ultimate reality is what we call God. View quote
R. S. Thomas
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)
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. View quote
R. S. Thomas
Art is recuperation from time. I lie back convalescing upon the prospect of a harvest already at hand. View quote
R. S. Thomas
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. View quote
R. S. Thomas
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? View quote
R. S. Thomas