Thomas More Quotes
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What though youth gave love and roses, Age still leaves us friends and wine
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If the lion knew his own strength, hard were it for any man to rule him.
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What is deferred is not avoided.
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Oh! blame not the bard.
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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.
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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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As for rosemary, I let it run all over my garden walls, not only because my bees love it but because it is the herb sacred to remembrance and to friendship, whence a sprig of it hath a dumb language.
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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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We cannot go to heaven in featherbeds.
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By reason of gifts and bribes the offices be given to rich men, which should rather have been executed by wise men.
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And peradventure we have more cause to thank Him for our loss than for our winning; for His wisdom better seeth what is good for us than we do ourselves.
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I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.
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The Utopians feel that slaughtering our fellow creatures gradually destroys the sense of compassion, which is the finest sentiment of which our human nature is capable.
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The way to heaven out of all places is of length and distance.
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Sex and religion are closer to each other than either might prefer.
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The servant may not look to be in better case than his master.
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It is a wise mans part, rather to avoid sickness, than to wish for medicines.
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And it will fall out as in a complication of diseases, that by applying a remedy to one sore, you will provoke another; and that which removes the one ill symptom produces others.
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Friendship demands attention.
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They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters.
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An absolutely new idea is one of the rarest things known to man.
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In Utopia, where every man has a right to everything, they all know that if care is taken to keep the public stores full, no private man can want anything; for among them there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is poor, none in necessity; and though no man has anything, yet they are all rich; for what can make a man so rich as to lead a serene and cheerful life, free from anxieties.
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On his mounting the scaffold to be beheaded: 'I pray you, Master Lieutenant, see me safely up, and for my coming down, let me shift for myself.' To the executioner: 'Pick up thy spirits, Man, and be not afraid to do thyne office; my neck is very short; take heed, therefore thou strike not awry, for saving of thyne honesty.'
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Occupy your mind with good thoughts, or the enemy will fill them with bad ones.