All Quotes by R. S. Thomas
“The furies are at home”
“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.”
“Imaginative truth is the most immediate way of presenting ultimate reality to a human being … ultimate reality is what we call God.”
“You have to imagine because it is timeless.”
“I lie but for days, years, for eternity.”
“Let despair be known where trust may take root and grow.”
“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.”
“I'm obviously not orthodox, I don't know how many real poets have ever been orthodox.”
“Verse should be as natural To the white flower of immortal beauty”
“Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer Your verse a ladder.”
“"Sunlight's a thing that needs a window Noisily by them, glib with prose.”
“They left no books, Or out of time will correct this.”
“It seems wrong that out of this bird, At one touch of that bright bill.”
“A slow singer, but loading each phrase But fresh always with new tears.”
“He arose, pacing the floor The long torture of delayed birth.”
“Was he balked by silence? He kneeled long, Golden with fruit of a man's body.”
“I have been all men known to history, Innocent love under a spring sky.”
“I have been Merlin wandering in the woods By a sudden acquaintance with man’s rage.”
“I have known exile and a wild passion Stubborn with beauty, out of the heart’s need.”
“We live in our own world, The adult subterfuge.”
“You cannot find the centre Of your remoter heaven.”
“Even God had a Welsh name: Between the boards of a black book.”
“I am a man now. You can feel the place where the brains grow.”
“I am like a tree, The footprints that led up to me.”
“There is blood in my veins Contracted in so many loins.”
“Why, then, are my hands red Is this where I was misled?”
“Why are my hands this way Does no God hear when I pray?”
“I have nowhere to go. The clock of my whole being is slow.”
“It is too late to start I must stay here with my hurt.”
“The deep spaces between stars, His mind cast.”
“She is young. Have I the right Crucifies.”
“Deliver me from the long drought to gold by the affluence of their fountain.”
“It is alive. It is you, is not revealed.”
“The darkness of the being of love.”
“Life is not hurrying once, but is the eternity that awaits you.”
“Sometimes a strange light of the pioneers who died for truth.”
“There was a larger pattern loom, I with a small needle.”
“A power guided my hand. If an invisible company of the design.”
“It was not that lived me.”
“Is there a place other than mind's failure to explain itself?”
“Art is recuperation of a harvest already at hand.”
“In the silence of reason?”
“I had looked forward I cannot decipher.”
“Ah, what balance is needed at hoping for the reciprocating touch?”
“somewhere within sight the green leaves of time.”
“What was the shell doing, Listen.”
“I turn now but to Wallace Stevens”
“Blessings, Stevens; notwithstanding you are.”
“All art is anonymous.”