Thomas More Quotes
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Who does more earnestly long for a change than he who is uneasy in his present circumstances? And who run to create confusions with so desperate a boldness as those who have nothing to lose, hope to gain by them?
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The most part of all princes have more delight in warlike manners and feats of chivalry than in the good feats of peace.
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It is naturally given to all men to esteem their own inventions best.
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Two evils, greed and faction are the destruction of all justice.
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Pride measures prosperity not by her own advantages but by the disadvantages of others. She would not even wish to be a goddess unless there were some wretches left whom she could order about and lord it over, whose misery would make her happiness seem all the more extraordinary, whose poverty can be tormented and exacerbated by a display of her wealth. This infernal serpent, pervading the human heart, keeps men from reforming their lives, holding them back like a suckfish.
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A good tale evil told were better untold, and an evil take well told need none other solicitor.
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Rose! Thou art the sweetest flower that ever drank the amber shower: Even the Gods, who walk the sky, are amourous of thy scented sigh.
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There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves, but it were much better to make such good provisions by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and of dying for it.
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Every tribulation which ever comes our way either is sent to be medicinal, if we will take it as such, or may become medicinal, if we will make it such, or is better than medicinal, unless we forsake it.
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Oh! blame not the bard.
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Anyone who campaigns for public office becomes disqualified for holding any office at all.
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For when they see the people swarm into the streets, and daily wet to the skin with rain, and yet cannot persuade them to go out of the rain, they do keep themselves within their houses, seeing they cannot remedy the folly of the people.
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Howbeit, this one thing, son, I assure you on my faith, that if the parties will at hands call for justice, then, all were it my father stood on the one side, and the devil on the other, his cause being good, the devil should have right.
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If honor were profitable, everybody would be honorable.
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A pretty face may be enough to catch a man, but it takes character and good nature to hold him.
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What is deferred is not avoided.
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The education of youth belongs to the priests, yet they do not take so much care of instructing them in letters, as in forming their minds and manners aright; they use all possible methods to infuse, very early, into the tender and flexible minds of children, such opinions as are both good in themselves and will be useful to their country, for when deep impressions of these things are made at that age, they follow men through the whole course of their lives, and conduce much to preserve the peace of the government, which suffers by nothing more than by vices that rise out of ill opinions.
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For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.
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Lawyers-a profession it is to disguise matters.
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Every man has by the law of nature a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence.
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One of the greatest problems of our time is that many are schooled but few are educated.
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I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.
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The chief aim of their constitution is that, whenever public needs permit, all citizens should be free, so far as possible, to withdraw their time and energy from the service of the body, and devote themselves to the freedom and culture of the mind. For that, they think, is the real happiness of life.
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If we lived in a state where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us saintly. But since we see that avarice, anger, pride and stupidity commonly profit far beyond charity, modesty, justice and thought, perhaps we must stand fast a little, even at the risk of being heroes.