Top 120 Dylan Thomas Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Do not go gently into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

— Dylan Thomas

Featured in: Courage Quotes, Perseverance Quotes, Interesting Quotes, Poetry Quotes, Philosophical Quotes

2. “Rage, rage against the dying light.”

— Dylan Thomas

Featured in: Poetry Quotes, Passion Quotes, Giving Up Quotes, Fighting Quotes

3. “Life always offers you a second chance. It’s called tomorrow.”

— Dylan Thomas

4. “I hold a beast, an angel and a madman within me.”

— Dylan Thomas

5. “Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.”

— Dylan Thomas

Featured in: Poetry Quotes, Sad Quotes

6. “I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, down throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.”

— Dylan Thomas

7. “He who seeks rest finds boredom. He who seeks work finds rest.”

— Dylan Thomas

Featured in: Quotes About Work

8. “Though lovers be lost love shall not.”

— Dylan Thomas

Featured in: Broken Heart Quotes

9. “When one burns one’s bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.”

— Dylan Thomas

10. “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

11. “Though they go mad they shall be sane, though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; though lovers be lost love shall not; and death shall have no dominion.”

— Dylan Thomas

12. “Somebody’s boring me. I think it’s me.”

— Dylan Thomas

Featured in: Book Quotes, Reading Quotes

13. “Break in the sun till the sun breaks down, And death shall have no dominion.”

— Dylan Thomas

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

— Dylan Thomas

15. “Cold beer is bottled God.”

— Dylan Thomas

16. “To begin, at the beginning...”

— Dylan Thomas

17. “After the first death, there is no other.”

— Dylan Thomas

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

18. “The only sea I saw Was the seesaw sea With you riding on it. Lie down, lie easy. Let me shipwreck in your thighs.”

— Dylan Thomas

19. “I do not need any friends. I prefer enemies. They are better company and their feelings towards you are always genuine.”

— Dylan Thomas

20. “Oh, isn’t life a terrible thing, thank God?”

— Dylan Thomas

21. “An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do.”

— Dylan Thomas

22. “We can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don’t know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don’t care that we don’t.”

— Dylan Thomas

23. “If you want a definition of poetry, say: Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing and let it go at that.”

— Dylan Thomas

24. “And books which told me everything about the wasp, except why.”

— Dylan Thomas

Featured in: Book Quotes

25. “To begin at the beginning: It is a spring moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black.”

— Dylan Thomas

26. “I said some words to the close and holy darkness and then I slept.”

— Dylan Thomas

27. “Poetry is what makes my toenails twinkle.”

— Dylan Thomas

28. “Man’s wants remain unsatisfied till death. Then, when his soul is naked, is he one With the man in the wind, and the west moon, With the harmonious thunder of the sun.”

— Dylan Thomas

29. “Never be lucid, never state, if you would be regarded great.”

— Dylan Thomas

30. “Hands have not tears to flow.”

— Dylan Thomas

31. “It snowed last year too: I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.”

— Dylan Thomas

32. “Lie down, lie easy. Let me shipwreck in your thighs.”

— Dylan Thomas

33. “A worm tells summer better than the clock, The slug’s a living calendar of days; What shall it tell me if a timeless insect Says the world wears away?”

— Dylan Thomas

34. “I know in London a Welsh hairdresser who has striven so vehemently to abolish his accent that he sounds like a man speaking with the Elgin marbles in his mouth.”

— Dylan Thomas

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

36. “Chastity prays for me, piety sings, Innocence sweetens my last black breath, Modesty hides my thighs in her wings, And all the deadly virtues plague my death!”

— Dylan Thomas

37. “Love is the last light spoken.”

— Dylan Thomas

38. “And I rose In rainy autumn And walked abroad in a shower of all my days...”

— Dylan Thomas

39. “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bend by the same wintry fever.”

— Dylan Thomas

40. “Shall I let in the stranger, Shall I welcome the sailor, Or stay till the day I die? Hands of the stranger and holds of the ships, Hold you poison or grapes?”

— Dylan Thomas

41. “The crisp path through the field in this December snow, in the deep dark, where we trod the buried grass like ghosts on dry toast.”

— Dylan Thomas

42. “Do not go gentle into that good night.”

— Dylan Thomas

43. “This bread I break was once the oat, This wine upon a foreign tree Plunged in its fruit; Man in the day or wind at night Laid the crops low, broke the grape’s joy.”

— Dylan Thomas

44. “A springful of larks in a rolling Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling Blackbirds and the sun of October Summery On the hill’s shoulder.”

— Dylan Thomas

45. “When logics die, The secret of the soil grows through the eye, And blood jumps in the sun; Above the waste allotments the dawn halts.”

— Dylan Thomas

46. “Reading one’s own poems aloud is letting the cat out of the bag. You may have always suspected bits of a poem to be overweighted, overviolent, or daft, and then, suddenly, with the poet’s tongue around them, your suspicion is made certain.”

— Dylan Thomas

Featured in: Reading Quotes

47. “Poetry is the rhythmic, inevitably narrative, movement from an overclothed blindness to a naked vision that depends in its intensity on the strength of the labour put into the creation of the poetry.”

— Dylan Thomas

48. “Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.”

— Dylan Thomas

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

— Dylan Thomas

50. “Oh, I’m a martyr to music.”

— Dylan Thomas