Robert Bolt Quotes

#1. Sir Thomas More: Why not be a teacher? You'd be a fine teacher; perhaps a great one.
Richard Rich: If I was, who would know it?
Sir Thomas More: You; your pupils; your friends; God. Not a bad public, that.

Robert Bolt

#2. When a man takes an oath ... he's holding his own self in his own hands. Like water.

Robert Bolt

#3. Some men think the Earth is round, others think it flat; it is a matter capable of question. But, if it is flat, will the King's command make it round? And, if it is round, will the King's command flatten it?

Robert Bolt

#4. I am used to hear bad men misuse the name of God, yet God exists.

Robert Bolt

#5. Your taste in music is excellent. It exactly coinsides with my own!

Robert Bolt

#6. RICH I'm lamenting. I've lost my innocence.
CROMWELL You lost that some time ago. If you've only just noticed, it can't have been very important to you.

Robert Bolt

#7. Even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh.

Robert Bolt

#8. The law is not a "light" for you or any man to see by; the law is not an instrument of any kind ... The law is a causeway upon which, so long as he keeps to it, a citizen may walk safely.

Robert Bolt

#9. When statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.

Robert Bolt

#10. I wish we could all have good luck, all the time! I wish we had wings! I wish rain water was beer!

Robert Bolt

#11. Alice More: As for understanding, I understand that you are the best man that I ever met,
or am likely to;
And, if you go ... Well, God knows why I suppose.
Though as God's my witness God's kept deadly quiet about it!

Robert Bolt

#12. Good marriages are made in heaven. Or some such place.

Robert Bolt

#13. The man who tells lies hides the truth, but the man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it.

Robert Bolt

#14. For Wales? Why Richard, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world ... but for Wales!

Robert Bolt

#15. The nobility of England would have snored through the Sermon on the Mount. But you'll labor like scholars over a bulldogs pedigree.

Robert Bolt

#16. Have patience, Margaret, and trouble not thyself. Death comes for us all; even at our birth - death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh. It is the law of nature and the will of God.

Robert Bolt

#17. My master Thomas More would give anything to anyone. Some say that's good and some say that's bad, but I say he can't help it - and that's bad ... because some day someone's going to ask him for something that he wants to keep; and he'll be out of practice

Robert Bolt

#18. Morality's not practical. Morality's a gesture. A complicated gesture learnt from books.

Robert Bolt

#19. I'm breathing ... are you breathing too? It's nice, isn't it?

Robert Bolt

#20. Death comes for us all. Even for kings he comes.

Robert Bolt

#21. Lord, grant us rest tonight, and if we must be wakeful, cheerful.

Robert Bolt