Gwyn Thomas Quotes

But the beauty is in the walking -- we are betrayed by destinations.

My father always said patience dampened the ground at your feet so that your feet trod on it without a sound, and people never heard you as you passed on your way to the grave, and you weren't bothered as much by people then as you would be if you went stamping on the hard ground like a self-important horse, drawing attention to yourself.

Also, Emmanuel had a mop of snowy hair and a pure, remote look. These features helped him a lot in his work. Whatever you say it is bound to sound fuller and wiser if it is said beneath a layer of white hair. And with a pure look in a world running so much to dirt and antics whose trade mark is a blush, you can often make a whole career without ever bothering to open your mouth except to eat.

Whenever there was an upheaval in some foreign land, there would be a procession of refugees from that land filing through Emmanuel's pulpit, with quivers full of piety, singing ballads of a sad and lowering sort like 'Russia, Holy Russia, I will die to set you free', and telling a sackful of stories about their narrow escape from the grip of the half-dozen or so godless persecutors who were at the bottom of all this trouble.

I liked being on top of that tip. It was high. Even the wind in winter when it was high and seemed in a mood to toss me about two miles, I did not dislike it, for I dislike only those people and things that harm me and know they harm. From this summit I could see for great distances. To the south ran the fat green plain, full of plants and farmers and other voters I knew little of, and that plain finished with the sea. The sea did not interest me because the urge to fish was never in my family, and there were plenty of places to drown in inside the hills. To the north ran ranges of hills till the eye lost them. On each new hill there would most likely be some element like Oscar owning it, and between the hills, on the valley sides, elements like Danny getting it in the neck and going black in the face because of it. It all seemed very endless and unsweet and I never felt that I would like to leave the mountain on which I stood and travel over the mountains I could see to the farthest distance. There was no mystery in them. I knew and did not love the life that crawled between the cracks.

In a world so full of men who hurt the truth and get paid at so much for every groan we hear coming from it, it is a pleasant and dignified thing to spend some time at home making your very own lies for your very own bemusement.

That Thomas was even venerated as a "once and future" being- a hero who was rumored to not be dead but simply removed from our world, and due to return one day- firmly positions him in a much larger tradition of mythical and folkloric heroes, like Arthur in Britain.