Thomas More Quotes

Show the sun with a lantern.

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

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

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.

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

It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world, but for Wales?

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

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

Failing all else, their last resort will be: 'This was good enough for our ancestors, and who are we to question their wisdom?' Then they'll settle back in their chairs, with an air of having said the lst word on the subject — as if it would be a major disaster for anyone to be caught being wiser than his ancestors!

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.

Pride thinks its own happiness shines the brighter, by comparing it with the misfortunes of other persons; that by displaying its own wealth they may feel their poverty the more sensibly.

I’m responsible for my own work, and my own work alone, not for anyone else’s credibility.

"Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), also known as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, author, and statesman. During his lifetime he earned a reputation as a leading humanist scholar and occupied many public offices, including that of Lord Chancellor from 1529 to 1532. More coined the word "utopia", a name he gave to an ideal, imaginary island nation whose political system he described in a book published in 1516. He is chiefly remembered for his principled refusal to accept King Henry VIII's claim to be supreme head of the Church of England, a decision which ended his political career and led to his execution as a traitor. In 1935, four hundred years after his death, More was canonized in the Catholic Church by Pope Pius XI, and was later declared the patron saint of lawyers and statesmen. He shares his feast day, June 22 on the Catholic calendar of saints, with Saint John Fisher, the only Bishop during the English Reformation to maintain his allegiance to the Pope. More was added to the Anglican Churches' calendar of saints in 1980. Source: Wikipedia"

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

The Utopians call those nations that come and ask magistrates from them Neighbours; but those to whom they have been of more particular service, Friends; and as all other nations are perpetually either making leagues or breaking them, they never enter into an alliance with any state. They think leagues are useless things, and believe that if the common ties of humanity do not knit men together, the faith of promises will have no great effect; and they are the more confirmed in this by what they see among the nations round about them, who are no strict observers of leagues and treaties.