70 Best Dylan Thomas Quotes From The Famous Welsh Poet

Dylan Thomas was a notable Welsh poet and author who also worked as a script-writer in BBC for financial stability.

He was a renowned poet and his works remained popular even after his premature death. His legacy is still felt in the United Kingdom and further afield.

In his early life, the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, worked as a journalist. But soon after he started working as a full time poet and author. His works are known for great insights and lyricism. He died at the age of 39 owing to his extensive drinking habits. His popular works include 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night'.

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These are some hand-picked quotes by Dylan Thomas you simply can't miss.

1. "When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes."

-Dylan Thomas.

2. “A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it."

-Dylan Thomas.

3. "Don't be too harsh to these poems until they're typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction."

-Dylan Thomas.

4. "Because their words had forked no lightning they, Do not go gentle into that good night."

-Dylan Thomas.

5. "No honest writer today can possibly avoid being influenced by Freud."

-Dylan Thomas.

6. "Poetry is not the most important thing in life. I'd much rather lie in a hot bath reading Agatha Christie and sucking sweets."

-Dylan Thomas.

7. "The ugly, lovely, at least to me, town is alive, exciting and real though war has made a hideous hole in it."

-Dylan Thomas.

8. "I'm not a country man; I stand for, if anything the aspidistra, the provincial drive, the morning cafe, the evening pub..."

-Dylan Thomas.

9. "I knew, in fact, that I must be a writer of words, and nothing else."

-Dylan Thomas.

10. "Somebody's boring me. I think it's me."

-Dylan Thomas.

11. "The function of posterity is to look after itself."

-Dylan Thomas.

12. "An Anglo-Welsh writer is neither one thing nor the other. He keeps going in a no-man's-land between two cultures."

-Dylan Thomas.

13. "From August to May, For a searat of man drifting through eternal blue, aboard the finest Debris."

-Dylan Thomas.

14. "I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn't do to upset one's own vanity."

-Dylan Thomas.

15. "And here I am now, at the very moment of such an odious, though respectable, danger."

-Dylan Thomas.

16. "I love you every second of every hour of every day & night."

-Dylan Thomas, Letter To Caitlyn.

17. "Never be lucid, never state, if you would be regarded great."

-Dylan Thomas.

18. "And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose, my youth is bent by the same wintry fever."

-Dylan Thomas.

19. "Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase."

-Dylan Thomas.

20. "I used to think that once a writer became a man of letters, if only for a half hour, he was done for. "

-Dylan Thomas.

21. "What If I'd been a sailor? I think it might've ended well."

-Dylan Thomas.

22. "Reading one's own poems aloud is letting the cat out of the bag."

-Dylan Thomas.

23. "For various reasons he [an Anglo-Welsh writer] is obliged to write in English."

-Dylan Thomas.

24. "He who seeks rest finds boredom. He who seeks work finds rest."

-Dylan Thomas.

25. "A horrid alcoholic explosion scatters all my good intentions like bits of limbs and clothes over the doorsteps and into the saloon bars of the tawdriest pubs."

-Dylan Thomas.

26. "Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night."

-Dylan Thomas.

27. "From poles of skull and toe the windy blood, Slides like a sea; Nor fenced, nor staked, the gushers of the sky."

-Dylan Thomas.

28. "A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him."

-Dylan Thomas.

29. "The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself, I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone."

-Dylan Thomas.

30. "Go on thinking that you don't need to be read and you'll find that it may become quite true: no one will feel the need tom read it because it is written for yourself alone."

-Dylan Thomas.

If you like discovering new authors, Dylan Thomas is the author you must read!

31. "Time held me green and dying, Though I sang in my chains like the sea."

-Dylan Thomas.

32. "Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

-Dylan Thomas.

33. "I like worms and corruption."

-Dylan Thomas.

34. "Youth calls to age across the tired years: 'What have you found,' he cries, 'what have you sought?" 'What have you found,' age answers through his tears, 'What have you sought?'"

-Dylan Thomas.

35. "And, broken ghosts with glow-worms in their heads, The things of light, File through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones."

-Dylan Thomas.

36. "Sleeping as quiet as death, side by wrinkled side, toothless, salt and brown, like two old kippers in a box."

-Dylan Thomas.

37. "After the first death, there is no other."

-Dylan Thomas.

38. "And death shall have no dominion. Under the windings of the sea they lying long shall not die windily."

-Dylan Thomas.

39. "The majesty and burning of the child's death."

-Dylan Thomas.

40. "Hold my hand, he said, and then: why are your putting the sheet over my face?"

-Dylan Thomas.

41. "Dark is a way and light is a place, Heaven that never was Nor will be ever is always true 'Poem on His Birthday."

-Dylan Thomas.

42. "I said some words to the close and holy darkness and then I slept."

-Dylan Thomas.

43. "Modesty hides my thighs in her wings, And all the deadly virtues plague my death."

-Dylan Thomas.

44. "I shall not murder, The mankind of her going with a grave truth, Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath."

-Dylan Thomas.

45. "Shall I let in the stranger, Shall I welcome the sailor, Or stay till the day I die?"

-Dylan Thomas.

46. "Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight, Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

-Dylan Thomas.

47. "Rhianon, he said, hold my hand, Rhianon. She did not hear him, but stood over his bed and fixed him with an unbroken sorrow."

-Dylan Thomas.

48. "And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb, How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm."

-Dylan Thomas.

49. "Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter, Robed in the long friends, The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother, Secret by the unmourning water, Of the riding Thames."

-Dylan Thomas.

50. "Man’s wants remain unsatisfied till death."

-Dylan Thomas.

Here are some Dylan Thomas love quotes you will absolutely adore.

51. "Though lovers be lost love shall not."

-Dylan Thomas.

52. "These poems, with all their crudities, doubts and confusions, are written for the love of man and in Praise of God, and I'd be a damn fool if they weren't."

-Dylan Thomas.

53. "Teacher of glorious stories to tell? Man of gold, or stores to sell? Lover to a gentle belle? Maybe a camel; A seashell. What mightn't've been a life where it mightn't've ended well?"

-Dylan Thomas.

54. "Why do men think you can pick love up and re-light it like a candle? Women know when love is over."

-Dylan Thomas.

55. "I love you so much I’ll never be able to tell you; I’m frightened to tell you. I can always feel your heart. Dance tunes are always right: I love you body and soul."

-Dylan Thomas.

56. "Love is the last light spoken."

-Dylan Thomas.

57. "One: I am a Welshman; two: I am a drunkard; three: I am a lover of the human race, especially of women."

-Dylan Thomas.

58. "As I read more and more - and it was not all verse, by any means - my love for the real life of words increased until I knew that I must live with them and in them, always."

-Dylan Thomas.

59. "Light breaks where no sun shines; Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart, Push in their tides."

-Dylan Thomas.

60. "This is the world: the lying likeness of, Our strips of stuff that tatter as we move Loving and being loth; The dream that kicks the buried from their sack, And lets their trash be honoured as the quick."

-Dylan Thomas.

61. "Nothing grows in our garden, only washing. And babies. And where's their fathers live, my love? Over the hills and far away."

-Dylan Thomas.

62. "Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night."

-Dylan Thomas.

63. "In my craft or sullen art, Exercised in the still night, When only the moon rages, And the lovers lie abed, With all their griefs in their arms."

-Dylan Thomas.

64. "Time passes. Listen. Time passes. Come closer now. Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night."

-Dylan Thomas.

65. "Husk of young stars and handfull zodiac, Love in the frost is pared and wintered by."

-Dylan Thomas.

66. " You're thinking, you're no better than you should be, Polly, and that's good enough for me."

-Dylan Thomas.

67. I fell in love — that is the only expression I can think of — at once, and am still at the mercy of words."

-Dylan Thomas.

68. "I suppose soul means that I can hear you and see you and love you in every single, single thing in the whole world asleep or awake."

-Dylan Thomas.

69. "The photograph is married to the eye, Grafts on its bride one-sided skins of truth."

-Dylan Thomas.

70. "On the ivory stages, But for the common wages, Of their most secret heart."

-Dylan Thomas.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for Dylan Thomas quotes then why not take a look at E.E. Cummings quotes, or William Blake quotes.

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