Thomas More Quotes
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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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If the lion knew his own strength, hard were it for any man to rule him.
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We cannot go to heaven in featherbeds.
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Getting married is like putting one's hand in a bag containing 99 serpents and one eel.
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A man taking basil from a woman will love her always.
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What though youth gave love and roses, Age still leaves us friends and wine
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No more like together than is chalke to coles.
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I would uphold the law if for no other reason but to protect myself.
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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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There are several sorts of religions, not only in different parts of the island, but even in every town; some worshipping the sun, others the moon or one of the planets.
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In the first place, most princes apply themselves to the arts of war, in which I have neither ability nor interest, instead of to the good arts of peace. They are generally more set on acquiring new kingdoms by hook or by crook than on governing well those that they already have.
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An absolutely new idea is one of the rarest things known to man.
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. . . the state of things and the dispositions of men were then such, that a man could not well tell whom he might trust or whom he might fear.
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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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The things we pray for, good Lord, give us grace to labor for.
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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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Nor can they understand why a totally useless substance like gold should now, all over the world, be considered far more important than human beings, who gave it such value as it has, purely for their own convenience.
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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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Occupy your mind with good thoughts, or the enemy will fill them with bad ones.
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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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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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Sex and religion are closer to each other than either might prefer.
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Friendship demands attention.