Thomas The Rhymer Ballad Quotes

And see ye not that braid braid road
That lies across that lily leven?
That is the path of wickedness
Though some call it the road to heaven ~ Walter Scott

It is said in those districts that not all the trains which run on the city's tracks are listed in Metropolitan Transit's compendious schedule. The residents will tell you that after midnight, on some nights, there will be other trains, trains whose cry is different, the bellow of some great beast fighting for its life. And if you watch those trains go past, behind those bright flickering windows you will see passengers unlike any passengers you have seen when riding the trains yourself: men with wings, women with horns, beast-headed children, fauns and dryads and green-skinned people more beautiful than words can describe. In 1893, a schoolteacher swore that she saw a unicorn; in 1934, a murderer turned himself into the police, weeping, saying that he saw his victims staring at him from a train as it howled past the station platform on which he stood.
These are the seraphic trains. The stories say they run to Heaven, Hell, and Faërie. They are omens, but no one can agree on what they portend. And although you will never meet anyone who has seen or experienced it, there are persistent rumors, unkillable rumors, that sometimes, maybe once a century, maybe twice, a seraphic train will stop in its baying progress and open its doors for a mortal.
Those who know the story of Thomas the Rhymer - and even some who don't - insist that all these people, blest or damned as they may be, must be poets. ~ Sarah Monette

Don't go the way the world takes you, take the world the way you go. ~ Mathew Thomas

Science, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term 'doubting Thomas' well illustrates the difference. ~ Paul Davies

What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round. ~ Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The ability to communicate is not something we are born with. We have to learn it and earn it. ~ Thomas S. Monson

He said to me, 'The book has found its reader,' and what could I do but agree with him? ~ Thomas Ligotti

For naturall Bloud is in like manner made of the fruits of the Earth; and circulating, nourisheth by the way, every Member of the Body of Man. ~ Thomas Hobbes

You're Subject A-two," Newt answered. Then he lowered his eyes
"And?" Thomas pushed.
Newt hesitated, then answered without looking at him. "It doesn't call you anything. It just says ... 'To be killed by Group B. ~ James Dashner

We did not make ourselves, nor did we fashion a world that could not work without pain, and great pain at that, with a little pleasure, very little, to string us along--a world where all organisms are inexorably pushed by pain throughout their lives to do that which will improve their chances to survive and create more of themselves. Left unchecked, this process will last as long as a single cell remains palpitating in this cesspool of the solar system, this toilet of the galaxy. So why not lend a hand in nature's suicide? For want of a deity that could be held to account for a world in which there is terrible pain, let nature take the blame for our troubles. We did not create an environment uncongenial to our species, nature did. One would think that nature was trying to kill us off, or get us to suicide ourselves once the blunder of consciousness came upon us. What was nature thinking? We tried to anthropomorphize it, to romanticize it, to let it into our hearts. But nature kept its distance, leaving us to our own devices. So be it. Survival is a two-way street. Once we settle ourselves off-world, we can blow up this planet from outer space. It's the only way to be sure its stench will not follow us. Let it save itself if it can--the condemned are known for the acrobatics they will execute to wriggle out of their sentences. But if it cannot destroy what it has made, and what could possibly unmake it, then may it perish along with every other living thing it has introduced t ~ Thomas Ligotti

What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and power into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian senate. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Friend, be not afraid of thy office, thou sendest me to God. ~ Thomas The Apostle

He came to the University of California, Berkeley, with many aspirations, but as often happens, life got in the way, and his best laid plans turned into dreams for another day. As he gazed over the building immediately in the foreground, he could see Sather Tower on Berkeley's campus, known for resembling Campanile di San Marco in Venice. ~ Rob Thomas

The policy of the American government is to leave its citizens free, neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Your journey through life and self-discovery is much like the start of a new day. As you grow, develop, and reinvent yourself, the tendrils of light tear through the darkness of your untapped potential and uncharted territory. As you learn more, discover your life's purpose, and establish a vision for your future, the light shines through on your true self. ~ Thomas Narofsky

When our happiness is dependent on what happens to us and when our self-focus determines our daily mood, our joy will necessarily be limited to whatever good thing happens to us. But when we learn to truly delight in the welfare of others and rejoice in what God is doing in their lives, the potential for increased joy skyrockets. ~ Gary L. Thomas

The Great Hall at the Met is one of the great portals of the world ... From there, you can walk in any direction to almost any culture. ~ Thomas P. Campbell

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will. ~ Thomas Carlyle

By the end of the day, the Gladers had turned into a small army. A very pathetic, ill-prepared Army, Thomas thought, but an army all the same. ~ James Dashner

Culture and possessions, there is the bourgeoisie for you. ~ Thomas Mann

A person cannot direct his emotional life in the way he bids his motor system to reach for a cup. He cannot will himself to want the right thing or to love the right person or to be happy after a disappointment, or even to be happy in happy times. People lack this capacity not through a deficiency of discipline but because the jurisdiction of will is limited to the latest brain and to those functions within its purview. Emotional life can be influenced, but it cannot be commanded. ~ Thomas Lewis

I have very good friends who are in the army and also friends within the police force. When I say friends, people who love my music and who actually love the messages within my music. ~ Thomas Mapfumo

I have no plans to call on you, Clarice, the world being more interesting with you in it. ~ Thomas Harris

I acknowledge that I do not understand the processes of creation, but I accept the fact of it. ~ Thomas S. Monson

If I were to choose among all gifts and qualities that which, on the whole, makes life pleasantest, I should select the love of children. No circumstance can render this world wholly a solitude to one who has this possession ~ Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Every time I catch myself trying to figure out other people's motives, I'll stop and ask myself: "What did I say or do that prompted the action? Why did I react to it as I did? Does what happened make a major difference to me, or am I making something big out of a trifle?"
Leave off that excessive desire of knowing; therein is found much distraction There are many things the knowledge of which is of little or no profit to the soul. ~ Thomas A Kempis

Too much truth in the hands of a liar is more dangerous than a world of lies told to the truthful ~ Thomas R. Williams

Time is the bastard offspring of an incestuous act that God committed upon reality." Merlin to Arthur in "Arthur Rex ~ Thomas Berger

The right of voting for persons charged with the execution of the laws that govern society is inherent in the word liberty, and constitutes the equality of personal rights. But even if that right (of voting) were inherent in property, which I deny, the right of suffrage would still belong to all equally, because, as I have said, all individuals have legitimate birthrights in a certain species of property. -Agrarian Justice ~ Thomas Paine

Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. ~ Thomas Carlyle

The best commentary on the principles of government which has ever been written. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The concept of "microaggression" is just one of many tactics used to stifle differences of opinion by declaring some opinions to be "hate speech," instead of debating those differences in a marketplace of ideas. To accuse people of aggression for not marching in lockstep with political correctness is to set the stage for justifying real aggression against them. ~ Thomas Sowell

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God ~ Thomas Jefferson

The poem began with the title. Then I was annoyed by one of the occasional poetry-is-dead articles. Then I refute that notion. ~ Thomas Lux

shall we refuse to the unhappy fugitives from distress that hospitality which the savages of the wilderness extended to our fathers arriving in this land? Shall oppressed humanity find no asylum on this globe? ~ Thomas Jefferson

Thus all consent to that maxim of Crassus, that a prince cannot have treasure enough, since he must maintain his armies out of it; that a king, even though he would, can do nothing unjustly; that all property is in him, not excepting the very persons of his subjects; and that no man has any other property but that which the king, out of his goodness, thinks fit to leave him. And they think it is the prince's interest that there be as little of this left as may be, as if it were his advantage that his people should have neither riches nor liberty, since these things make them less easy and willing to submit to a cruel and unjust government. Whereas necessity and poverty blunts them, makes them patient, beats them down, and breaks that height of spirit that might otherwise dispose them to rebel. ~ Thomas More

Our history in this country dates from the moment that restless men among us became restless under oppression and rose against it ... Agitation, contentions, ceaseless unrest, constant aspiring
a race so moved must prevail. ~ Timothy Thomas Fortune

Dolphins frequently leap above the water surface. One reason for this behaviour could be that, when travelling longer distances, jumping can save the dolphins energy as there is less friction while in the air. ~ Thomas Metzinger

People who have already been out in the real world, practicing for years whatever their particular specialty might be, have some basis for determining which things are relevant enough to go into a curriculum to teach those who follow. The idea that students can determine relevance in advance is one of the many counterproductive notions to come out of the 1960s. ~ Thomas Sowell

It was a few minutes before Helena could stop panting. She dared not read any further, or she'd crash through the connecting door and ravish Hastings - and she was far from sure how she felt about him.
As she was reading the manuscript of The Bride of Larkspear ~ Sherry Thomas

A man or a woman can inspire such deep fantasy and emotion that through the lovemaking embrace of a partners body we make break through the limits of the human condition to touch upon another level of reality. ~ Thomas Moore

Under our present enormous accumulation of books, I do affirm that a most miserable distraction of choice must be very generally incident to the times; that the symptoms of it are in fact very prevalent, and that one of the chief symptoms is an enormous 'gluttonism' for books. ~ Thomas De Quincey

DON'T EVER ANTAGONIZE THE HORN. ~ Thomas Pynchon

The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, ~ Thomas Carlyle

No magic Rune is stranger than a Book. All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying
as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. They are the chosen possession of men. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Can't you do something for her?" his nephew finally asked, when several moments passed and her screaming and
didn't stop.
"I already have. I didn't kill her," Lucian said dryly, then added, "Slow down. You're as bad as taxi drivers."
"And you're a backseat driver," Thomas muttered, then cursed under his breath. "Surely there are some drugs or something we could give her to settle her down?"
Lucian glanced at him with interest. "Do you have any?"
Thomas blinked. "No."
"Hmm." He sat back in his seat. "Neither do I."
Thomas stared for a moment, glanced back at the woman in the back of the car, then said, "Her screaming is rather loud, don't you think? Just a bit distracting for those of us trying to concentrate."
"Yes, it is," Lucian agreed, and reached into his pocket for his earplugs. He popped them into his ears and closed his eyes, the shrieking in the car considerably muffled. He'd have killed the woman before the plane had landed without the earplugs. They were a blessing. ~ Lynsay Sands

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