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.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that human existence is often a mere illusion or reflection, and true fulfillment comes from divine inspiration.
R. S. Thomas reflects on the nature of existence, positing that without a higher purpose or divine influence, human life resembles a mere shadow or fleeting dream. However, when one experiences a moment of divine glory or enlightenment, it transforms oneβs life, making it rich and profoundly sweet.
In practice
In a motivational speech highlighting the importance of purpose and higher calling.
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.
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.
Poetry is that / which arrives at the intellect / by way of the heart.
A good working definition of fanaticism is that you are so convinced of your views and policies that you are sure that anyone who opposed them must be either stupid and decieved or have some ulterior motive. We are today a nation where almost everyone in the public eye displays fanaticism with every utterance.
I'm almost like three people. There's me the, Dolly, the person. There's me, the star. And then there's me, the manager.
The West as a whole in the early 1990s become obsessed with a 'peace dividend' that would be spent over and over again on any number of soft-hearted and sometimes soft-headed causes. Politicians forget that the only real peace dividend is peace.
People consider the harms they inflict to be justified and forgettable, and the harms they suffer to be unprovoked and grievous.
I sat in the gradually chilling room, thinking of my whole past the way a drowning man is supposed to, and it seemed part of the present, part of the gray cold and the beggar woman without a face and the moulting birds frozen to their own filth in the Orangerie. I know now I was in the throes of some small glandular crisis, a sublimated bilious attack, a flick from the whip of melancholia, but then it was terrifying...nameless...
We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after youβre dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.
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