Thomas More Quotes

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.

Natural, as they define it, is synonymous with virtuous.

Show the sun with a lantern.

Instead of inflicting these horrible punishments, it would be far more to the point to provide everyone with some means of livelihood, so that nobody's under the frightful necessity of becoming first a thief and then a corpse.

The times are never so bad but that a good man can live in them.

See me safe up: for in my coming down, I can shift for myself.

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.’

როგორ შემიძლია ვინმე მძულდეს, როცა ყველა ერთ ურემში ვზივართ, რომელიც სიკვდილისაკენ მიგვაქანებს.

If a king should fall under such contempt or envy that he could not keep his subjects in their duty but by oppression and ill usage, and by rendering them poor and miserable, it were certainly better for him to quit his kingdom than to retain it by such methods as make him, while he keeps the name of authority, lose the majesty due to it.

The ordinary arts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.

leges habent perquam paucas. sufficiunt enim sic institutis paucissimae. quin hoc in primis apud alios improbant populos, quod legum interpretumque uolumina, non infinita sufficiunt. ipsi uero censent iniquissimum; ullos homines his obligari legibus; quae aut numerosiores sint, quam ut perlegi queant; aut obscuriores quam ut a quouis possint intelligi.

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.

Anticipated spears wound less.

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

They wonder much to hear that gold which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom it has value, should yet be thought of less value than this metal. That a man of lead, who has no more sense than a log of wood, and is as bad as he is foolish, should have many wise and good men to serve him, only because he has a great heap of that metal...