Thomas More Quotes

#1. No man shall be blamed in the maintenance of his own religion.

Thomas More

#2. Your friend Plato holds that commonwealths will only be happy when either philosophers rule or rulers philosophize: how remote happiness must appear when philosophers won't even deign to share their thoughts with kings.

Thomas More

#3. You do this, perhaps, with a good intention,' said the Cardinal, 'but, in my opinion, it were wiser in you, and perhaps better for you, not to engage in so ridiculous a contest with a Fool.'

Thomas More

#4. In the festival which concludes the period, before they go to the temple, both wives and children fall on their knees before their husbands or parents and confess everything in which they have either erred or failed in their duty, and beg pardon for it.

Thomas More

#5. No living creature is naturally greedy, except from fear of want - or in the case of human beings, from vanity, the notion that you're better than people if you can display more superfluous property than they can.

Thomas More

#6. 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.

Thomas More

#7. We are all in the same cart, going to execution; how can I hate anyone or wish anyone harm?

Thomas More

#8. 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.

Thomas More

#9. I die the kings good servant, but God's first.

Thomas More

#10. It is part of the business of life to be affable and pleasing to those whom either nature, chance or circumstance has made our companions.

Thomas More

#11. Men be so foolish as to have delight and pleasure in the doubtful glistering of a trifling little stone, which may behold any of the stars or else the sun itself.

Thomas More

#12. Our emotional symptoms are precious sources of life and individuality.

Thomas More

#13. They have had great disputes among themselves, whether one chosen by them to be a priest would not be thereby qualified to do all the things that belong to that character, even though he had no authority derived from the Pope,

Thomas More

#14. I cannot perfectly agree to everything he has related. However, there are many things in the commonwealth of Utopia that I rather wish, than hope, to see followed in our governments.

Thomas More

#15. A pretty face may be enough to catch a man, but it takes character and good nature to hold him.

Thomas More

#16. What part soever you take upon you, play that as well as you can and make the best of it.

Thomas More

#17. I should only ever tell the king what he ought to do, not what he could do. For if the lion knows his own strength, no man could control him.

Thomas More

#18. The most part of all princes have more delight in warlike manners and feats of chivalry than in the good feats of peace.

Thomas More

#19. they run in among their own men to restrain their fury; and if any of their enemies see them or call to them, they are preserved by that means; and such as can come so near them as to touch their garments have not only their lives, but their fortunes secured to them;

Thomas More

#20. only, in the first place, they serve the Prince, the Chief Priest, the Tranibors, the Ambassadors, and strangers, if there are any, which, indeed, falls out but seldom, and for whom there are houses, well furnished, particularly appointed for their reception when they come among them.

Thomas More

#21. Pride thinks it's own happiness shines the brighter by comparing it with the misfortunes of others.

Thomas More

#22. The channel is known only to the natives; so that if any stranger should enter into the bay without one of their pilots he would run great danger of shipwreck.

Thomas More

#23. They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters.

Thomas More

#24. 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.

Thomas More

#25. Yea, marry, now it is somewhat, for now it is rhyme; before, it was neither rhyme nor reason.

Thomas More

#26. There is a great number of noblemen among you that are themselves as idle as drones, that subsist on other men's labour, on the labour of their tenants, whom, to raise their revenues, they pare to the quick.

Thomas More

#27. Take something from yourself, to give to another, that is humane and gentle and never takes away as much comfort as it brings again.

Thomas More

#28. It is only natural, of course, that each man should think his own opinions best: the crow loves his fledgling, and the ape his cub.

Thomas More

#29. Severe and terrible punishments are enacted for theft, when it would be much better to enable every man to earn his own living, instead of being driven to the awful necessity of stealing and then dying for it.

Thomas More

#30. No one, on his deathbed, ever regretted having been a Catholic.

Thomas More

#31. The Utopians fail to understand why anyone should be so fascinated by the dull gleam of a tiny bit of stone, when he has all the stars in the sky to look at.

Thomas More

#32. Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out;

Thomas More

#33. Consider any year, that has been so unfruitful that many thousands have died of hunger; and yet if, at the end of that year, a survey was made of the granaries of all the rich men that have hoarded up the corn, it would be found that there was enough among them to have prevented all that consumption

Thomas More

#34. 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.

Thomas More

#35. We cannot go to heaven in featherbeds.

Thomas More

#36. A little wanton money, which burned out the bottom of his purse.

Thomas More

#37. Fortune doth both raise up the low and pluck down the high.

Thomas More

#38. I die the king's faithful servant, but God's first.

Thomas More

#39. [On ascending the platform to his execution] I pray you, I pray you, Mr Lieutenant, see me safe up and for my coming down, I can shift for myself.

Thomas More

#40. 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?

Thomas More

#41. Lord, give me a sense of humor so that I may take some happiness from this life and share it with others.

Thomas More

#42. If the lion knew his own strength, hard were it for any man to rule him.

Thomas More

#43. The times are never so bad but that a good man can make shift to live in them.

Thomas More

#44. Your love has build me from strength to strength. It has made me a stronger and better person than I was. There is nothing that love cannot change darling. Once you fall in love, even wars turn to love stories.

Thomas More

#45. 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.

Thomas More

#46. An absolutely new idea is one of the rarest things known to man.

Thomas More

#47. It is possible to live for the next life and still be merry in this.

Thomas More

#48. They set great store by their gardens ... Their studie and deligence herein commeth not only of pleasure, but also of a certain strife and contention ... concerning the trimming, husbanding, and furnishing of their gardens; everye man or his owne parte.

Thomas More

#49. and some are every year restored to it upon the good character that is given of them.

Thomas More

#50. [how can anyone] be silly enough to think himself better than other people, because his clothes are made of finer woolen thread than theirs. After all, those fine clothes were once worn by a sheep, and they never turned it into anything better than a sheep.

Thomas More

#51. For the springs of both good and evil flow from the prince over a whole nation, as from a lasting fountain.

Thomas More

#52. (...) there's a rule that no question affecting the general public may be finally decided until it has been debated for three days.

Thomas More

#53. Plato judged right, that except kings themselves became philosophers, they who from their childhood are corrupted with false notions would never fall in entirely with the counsels of philosophers, and this he himself found to be true in the person of Dionysius.

Thomas More

#54. Getting married is like putting one's hand in a bag containing 99 serpents and one eel.

Thomas More

#55. 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.

Thomas More

#56. All things appear incredible to us, as they differ more or less from our own manners.
- Utopia, Bk 2. (1516)

Thomas More

#57. Throughout the island they wear the same sort of clothes, without any other distinction except what is necessary to distinguish the two sexes and the married and unmarried.

Thomas More

#58. Anticipated spears wound less.

Thomas More

#59. There is nothing more inglorious than that glory that is gained by war

Thomas More

#60. Occupy your mind with good thoughts, or the enemy will fill them with bad ones.

Thomas More

#61. What is deferred is not avoided.

Thomas More

#62. The same trade generally passes down from father to son, inclinations often following descent: but if any man's genius lies another way he is, by adoption, translated into a family that deals in the trade to which he is inclined;

Thomas More

#63. It's a poor doctor who can't cure one disease without giving you another.

Thomas More

#64. I must say, extreme justice is an extreme injury: for we ought not to approve of those terrible laws that make the smallest offences capital, nor of that opinion of the Stoics that makes all crimes equal;

Thomas More

#65. Show the sun with a lantern.

Thomas More

#66. 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.

Thomas More

#67. Kindness and good nature unite men more effectually and with greater strength than any agreements whatsoever, since thereby the engagements of men's hearts become stronger than the bond and obligation of words.

Thomas More

#68. One man to live in pleasure and wealth, whiles all other weap and smart for it, that is the part not of a king, but of a jailor.

Thomas More

#69. For the whole country is full of soldiers, still kept up in time of peace (if such a state of a nation can be called a peace);

Thomas More

#70. Those among them that have not received our religion do not fright any from it, and use none ill that goes over to it, so that all the while I was there one man was only punished on this occasion.

Thomas More

#71. And as robbers prove sometimes gallant soldiers, so soldiers often prove brave robbers, so near an alliance there is between those two sorts of life.

Thomas More

#72. Everywhere do I percieve a certain conspiracy of rich men seeking their own advantage underthat name and pretext of commonwealth.

Thomas More

#73. ( ... ) personal prejudice and financial greed are the two great evils that threaten courts of law, and once they get the upper hand they immediately hamstring society, by destroying all justice.

Thomas More

#74. It is naturally given to all men to esteem their own inventions best.

Thomas More

#75. A man taking basil from a woman will love her always.

Thomas More

#76. For things will never be perfect, until human beings are perfect - which I don't expect them to be for quite a number of years!

Thomas More

#77. The change of the word does not alter the matter

Thomas More

#78. 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.

Thomas More

#79. For most princes apply themselves more to affairs of war than to the useful arts of peace; and in these I neither have any knowledge, nor do I much desire it; they are generally more set on acquiring new kingdoms, right or wrong, than on governing well those they possess:

Thomas More

#80. Why shouldst thou not take even as much pleasure in beholding a counterfeit stone, which thine eye cannot discern from a right stone?

Thomas More

#81. Every man has by the law of nature a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence.

Thomas More

#82. And one wild Shakespeare, following Nature's lights,
Is worth whole planets, filled with Stagyrites.

Thomas More

#83. Anyone who campaigns for public office becomes disqualified for holding any office at all.

Thomas More

#84. I perceive, Raphael, that you neither desire wealth nor greatness; and, indeed, I value and admire such a man much more than I do any of the great men in the world.

Thomas More

#85. 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.

Thomas More

#86. The things we pray for, good Lord, give us grace to labor for.

Thomas More

#87. Two evils, greed and faction are the destruction of all justice.

Thomas More

#88. for your lords are readier to feed idle people than to take care of the sick; and often the heir is not able to keep together so great a family as his predecessor did.

Thomas More

#89. Every eutopia contains a dystopia, every dystopia contains a eutopia. In

Thomas More

#90. Whoever loveth me, loveth my hound.

Thomas More

#91. The servant may not look to be in better case than his master.

Thomas More

#92. Nobody owns anything but everyone is rich - for what greater wealth can there be than cheerfulness, peace of mind, and freedom from anxiety?

Thomas More

#93. A good tale evil told were better untold, and an evil take well told need none other solicitor.

Thomas More

#94. but the priest's vestments are parti-coloured, and both the work and colours are wonderful.

Thomas More

#95. From whichsoever of these motives it might be, true it is, that many of them came over to our religion, and were initiated into it by baptism.

Thomas More

#96. Because the soul has such deep roots in personal and social life and its values run so contrary to modern concerns, caring for the soul may well turn out to be a radical act, a challenge to accepted norms.

Thomas More

#97. And, indeed, nature has so made us, that we all love to be flattered and to please ourselves with our own notions

Thomas More

#98. The increasing influence of the Bible is marvelously great, penetrating everywhere. It carries with it a tremendous power of freedom and justice guided by a combined force of wisdom and goodness.

Thomas More

#99. A drowning man will clutch at a straw.

Thomas More

#100. God made the angels to show Him splendor, as He made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind.

Thomas More