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Saint Thomas More (seven Feb 1478 – half dozen July 1535), also known as Sir Thomas More than, was an English language lawyer, writer, and pol. He is chiefly remembered for his principled refusal to take King Henry VIII's claim to be the supreme caput of the Church of England, a determination which concluded his political career and led to his execution as a traitor. In 1935, four hundred years after his decease, More than was canonized in the Catholic Church building and was afterwards declared the patron saint of statesmen, lawyers, and politicians.

For the 19th century Irish poet with a similar name, see: Thomas Moore

Quotes [edit]

• At present there was a immature gentleman which had married a merchant's wife. And having a trivial wanton money, which him thought burned out the lesser of his handbag, in the first yr of his wedding took his wife with him and went over sea, for none other errand but to see Flemish region and France and ride out i summer in those countries.
  • Works (c. 1530)
  • Sometimes paraphrased "A little wanton money, which burned out the bottom of his purse."

• For men use, if they have an evil turn, to write information technology in marble: and whoso doth u.s. a good turn we write it in grit.
  • Richard Iii and His Miserable Terminate (1543)

• And when the devil hath seen that they have gear up and then little by him, later on sure essays, made in such times as he thought most plumbing equipment, he hath given that temptation quite over. And this he doth non simply because the proud spirit cannot suffer to be mocked, simply likewise lest, with much tempting the human to the sin to which he could not in determination bring him, he should much increment his merit.
  • Dialogue of Condolement Against Tribulation (1535), Book Two, Department XVI

• The increasing influence of the Bible is marvelously great, penetrating everywhere. It carries with it a tremendous ability of freedom and justice guided past a combined forcefulness of wisdom and goodness.
  • Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Lexicon of Burning Words of Bright Writers (1895), p. 34.

• I practise no­body damage, I say none harm, I think none impairment, but wish everybody expert. And if this be not enough to proceed a man alive, in good organized religion, I long not to live.
  • Thomas More'southward Account, in a letter of the alphabet to his girl Margaret Roper, of his Second Interrogation

• Meet me condom up: for in my coming down, I tin shift for myself.
  • On ascending the platform to his execution, equally quoted in History of England (1856-1870) by James Anthony Froude

• I die the king'due south faithful servant, and God's first.
  • Words on the scaffold, attributed in The Essentials of Freedom : The Idea and Practice of Ordered Liberty in the Twentieth Century as explored at Kenyon Higher (1960) by Paul Grayness Hoffman, p. 43
  • First reported in indirect speech in the Paris Newsletter (1535): «Apres les exhorta, et supplia tres instamment qu'ils priassent Dieu pour le Roy, affin qu'il luy voulsist donner bon conseil, protestant qu'il mouroit son bon serviteur et de Dieu premierement. » ("Afterward he exhorted them, and besought them very earnestly to pray to God for the King, that He should requite him good counsel, protesting that he died his good servant, and God's first.")

• This hath not offended the king.
  • Equally he drew his beard aside upon placing his caput on the block, as quoted in Apothegms by Francis Bacon, no. 22

• If honor were assisting, everybody would be honorable.
  • Attributed in Lives That Made a Difference: An RSME Volume for Schools (2011) by P. J. Clarke

Utopia (1516) [edit]

The island of Utopia is in the heart 2 hundred miles broad, and holds almost at the same breadth over a nifty part of it, but it grows narrower towards both ends. Its figure is not unlike a crescent.

Full text at Wikisource

Other rocks lie under water, and are very dangerous. The channel is known just to the natives; so that if any stranger should enter into the bay without one of their pilots he would run not bad danger of shipwreck.

The Prince himself has no distinction, either of garments, or of a crown; but is only distinguished by a sheaf of corn carried before him; every bit the high priest is likewise known by his existence preceded by a person conveying a wax light.

• The island of Utopia is in the middle two hundred miles wide, and holds almost at the aforementioned breadth over a great part of information technology, only it grows narrower towards both ends. Its figure is not different a crescent. Between its horns the sea comes in eleven miles broad, and spreads itself into a great bay, which is environed with state to the compass of about five hundred miles, and is well secured from winds. In this bay in that location is no great electric current; the whole coast is, every bit it were, one connected harbour, which gives all that live in the island corking convenience for mutual commerce. But the entry into the bay, occasioned by rocks on the one hand and shallows on the other, is very dangerous. In the middle of it there is one single rock which appears in a higher place water, and may, therefore, easily be avoided; and on the top of it there is a tower, in which a garrison is kept; the other rocks lie under water, and are very unsafe. The channel is known only to the natives; then that if whatsoever stranger should enter into the bay without one of their pilots he would run bang-up danger of shipwreck.
  • Ch. 1 : Discourses of Raphael Hythloday, of the Best State of a Commonwealth

• Quam ob rem pulcherrima similitudine declarat Plato, cur merito sapientes abstineant a capessenda quippe republica. Cum populum videant in plateas effusum assiduis imbribus perfundi, nec persuadere queant illis, ut se subducant pluviae, tectaque subeant. Gnari nihil profuturos sese si exeant, quam ut una compluantur, semet intra tecta continent habentes satis, quando alienae stultitiae not possunt mederi, si ipsi saltem sint in tuto.
  • Plato past a goodly similitude declareth, why wise men refrain to meddle in the commonwealth. For when they see the people swarm into the streets, and daily wet to the peel with rain, and still cannot persuade them to go out of the rain, they do keep themselves within their houses, seeing they cannot remedy the folly of the people.
    • Ch. one : Discourses of Raphael Hythloday, of the Best State of a Democracy

• I must say, extreme justice is an extreme injury: For nosotros ought not to corroborate of those terrible laws that make the smallest offences capital, nor of that opinion of the Stoics that makes all crimes equal; equally if there were no difference to be made betwixt the killing a man and the taking his bag, between which, if we examine things impartially, there is no likeness nor proportion. God has commanded united states not to kill, and shall we kill so easily for a footling money?
  • Ch. 1 : Discourses of Raphael Hythloday, of the Best Country of a Republic

• I think putting thieves to decease is non lawful; and information technology is obviously and obvious that it is absurd and of ill consequence to the republic that a thief and a murderer should be equally punished; for if a robber sees that his danger is the aforementioned if he is convicted of theft equally if he were guilty of murder, this will naturally incite him to kill the person whom otherwise he would only take robbed; since, if the punishment is the same, there is more than security, and less danger of discovery, when he that can best make information technology is put out of the way; and so that terrifying thieves also much provokes them to cruelty.
  • Ch. one : Discourses of Raphael Hythloday, of the Best Land of a Commonwealth

• One rule observed in their council is, never to contend a thing on the same twenty-four hour period in which it is first proposed; for that is always referred to the side by side meeting, that and then men may non rashly and in the estrus of soapbox engage themselves besides before long, which might bias them so much that, instead of consulting the proficient of the public, they might rather study to support their first opinions, and past a perverse and preposterous sort of shame hazard their country rather than endanger their ain reputation, or venture the being suspected to take wanted foresight in the expedients that they at first proposed; and therefore, to foreclose this, they accept care that they may rather exist deliberate than sudden in their motions.
  • Ch. 3 : Of Their Magistrates

• They wonder much to hear that golden, which in itself is then useless a affair, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom information technology has its value, should all the same be thought of less value than it is.
  • Ch. six : Of the Travelling of the Utopians

• The Prince himself has no distinction, either of garments, or of a crown; simply is only distinguished by a sheaf of corn carried before him; every bit the high priest is as well known by his being preceded past a person carrying a wax light.
  • Ch. seven : Of Their Slaves, and of Their Marriages

• leges habent perquam paucas. sufficiunt enim sic institutis paucissimae. quin hoc in primis apud alios improbant populos, quod legum interpretumque uolumina, not 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.
  • They accept but few laws, and such is their constitution that they demand not many. They very much condemn other nations whose laws, together with the commentaries on them, swell up to so many volumes; for they retrieve it an unreasonable thing to oblige men to obey a body of laws that are both of such a majority, and and then nighttime every bit not to be read and understood by every one of the subjects.
  • Ch. seven : Of Their Slaves, and of Their Marriages

• They accept no lawyers amidst them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters and to wrest the laws, and, therefore, they recollect it is much amend that every man should plead his own cause, and trust it to the judge, equally in other places the client trusts information technology to a counsellor; past this means they both cut off many delays and detect out truth more certainly; for after the parties have laid open up the merits of the crusade, without those artifices which lawyers are apt to suggest, the estimate examines the whole thing, and supports the simplicity of such well-meaning persons, whom otherwise crafty men would exist sure to run down; and thus they avoid those evils which appear very remarkably among all those nations that labour under a vast load of laws. Every 1 of them is skilled in their law; for, as it is a very brusque study, then the plainest significant of which words are capable is always the sense of their laws; and they debate thus: all laws are promulgated for this terminate, that every man may know his duty; and, therefore, the plainest and well-nigh obvious sense of the words is that which ought to be put upon them, since a more refined exposition cannot be hands comprehended, and would merely serve to make the laws go useless to the greater part of mankind, and especially to those who need most the management of them; for information technology is all i not to make a law at all or to burrow it in such terms that, without a quick apprehension and much study, a homo cannot detect out the true meaning of it, since the generality of flesh are both and so wearisome, and and then much employed in their several trades, that they have neither the leisure nor the capacity requisite for such an enquiry.
  • Ch. 7 : Of Their Slaves, and of Their Marriages

In no victory exercise they glory so much as in that which is gained by dexterity and good conduct without mortality.

• In no victory do they glory so much as in that which is gained by dexterity and good acquit without bloodshed. In such cases they appoint public triumphs, and erect trophies to the honour of those who have succeeded; for then practise they reckon that a man acts suitably to his nature, when he conquers his enemy in such a fashion every bit that no other creature but a man could be capable of, and that is by the strength of his understanding. Bears, lions, boars, wolves, and dogs, and all other animals, apply their bodily force i against another, in which, as many of them are superior to men, both in strength and fierceness, then they are all subdued by his reason and agreement.
  • Ch. 8 : Of Their Military Discipline

• There are several sorts of religions, not simply in different parts of the isle, only even in every town; some worshipping the sunday, others the moon or ane of the planets. Some worship such men as accept been eminent in old times for virtue or celebrity, non but as ordinary deities, only as the supreme god. Notwithstanding the greater and wiser sort of them worship none of these, merely admire one eternal, invisible, infinite, and incomprehensible Deity; as a Being that is far in a higher place all our apprehensions, that is spread over the whole universe, not by His bulk, simply by His power and virtue; Him they phone call the Father of All, and acknowledge that the beginnings, the increase, the progress, the vicissitudes, and the end of all things come only from Him; nor do they offer divine honours to whatsoever simply to Him lonely. And, indeed, though they differ concerning other things, all the same all hold in this: that they call up there is i Supreme Being that fabricated and governs the globe, whom they call, in the language of their country, Mithras. They differ in this: that i thinks the god whom he worships is this Supreme Being, and another thinks that his idol is that god; merely they all hold in i principle, that whoever is this Supreme Being, He is also that neat essence to whose celebrity and majesty all honours are ascribed by the consent of all nations.
  • Ch. ix : Of the Religions of the Utopians

• Those amid them that have not received our religion do non fear whatever from it, and use none sick that goes over to it, so that all the while I was at that place 1 human was merely punished on this occasion. He being newly baptised did, notwithstanding all that we could say to the opposite, dispute publicly concerning the Christian religion, with more than zeal than discretion, and with so much heat, that he not only preferred our worship to theirs, only condemned all their rites as profane, and cried out against all that adhered to them as impious and sacrilegious persons, that were to be damned to everlasting burnings. Upon his having oftentimes preached in this manner he was seized, and after trial he was condemned to adjournment, not for having disparaged their religion, but for his inflaming the people to sedition; for this is one of their most ancient laws, that no human being ought to exist punished for his religion.
  • Ch. ix : Of the Religions of the Utopians

I practise no­torso harm, I say none damage, I call up none harm, but wish everybody adept. And if this be not enough to keep a man live, in skillful religion, I long not to live.

• Utopus having understood that earlier his coming among them the old inhabitants had been engaged in great quarrels concerning organized religion, by which they were so divided amidst themselves, that he plant it an piece of cake affair to conquer them, since, instead of uniting their forces confronting him, every dissimilar party in religion fought by themselves. Later on he had subdued them he made a police force that every man might be of what faith he pleased, and might endeavour to draw others to information technology by the force of argument and by amicable and modest ways, simply without bitterness against those of other opinions; but that he ought to use no other force only that of persuasion, and was neither to mix with it reproaches nor violence; and such as did otherwise were to be condemned to banishment or slavery.
  This law was made by Utopus, not only for preserving the public peace, which he saw suffered much past daily contentions and irreconcilable heats, but because he thought the interest of religion itself required it. He judged it not fit to determine anything rashly; and seemed to doubt whether those different forms of religion might not all come from God, who might inspire man in a different manner, and exist pleased with this variety; he therefore thought it indecent and foolish for any human to threaten and terrify another to make him believe what did not appear to him to be true. And supposing that simply i religion was actually true, and the residuum imitation, he imagined that the native forcefulness of truth would at last break forth and smoothen bright, if supported simply by the strength of statement, and attended to with a gentle and unprejudiced heed; while, on the other manus, if such debates were carried on with violence and tumults, equally the most wicked are always the nigh obstinate, so the best and most holy religion might be high-strung with superstition, as corn is with briars and thorns; he therefore left men wholly to their freedom, that they might be free to believe as they should see cause.
  • Ch. ix : Of the Religions of the Utopians

• Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I encounter or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing the public, merely pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out; first, that they may, without danger, preserve all that they have and then sick-caused, and then, that they may appoint the poor to toil and labour for them at as low rates equally possible, and oppress them as much as they please; and if they tin but prevail to go these contrivances established by the show of public authority, which is considered as the representative of the whole people, then they are accounted laws
  • Ch. 9 : Of the Religions of the Utopians

• Haec non suis commodis prosperitatem, sed ex alienis metitur incommodis.[one]
  • Translation: This vice [Pride] does not measure happiness and then much by its own conveniences, as by the miseries of others.
  • Alternating translation: [Pride] measures her prosperity not by her own goods but past others' wants.
  • Ch. 9 : Of the Religions of the Utopians

Quotes virtually More [edit]

• There is something very slack about a future that will take a biting satire for a vapid dream.
  • R. A. Lafferty, depicting Thomas More than commenting on the reception of his Utopia, in Past Master (1968), Ch. 2

• A man of an affections's wit and singular learning. I know not his swain. For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness and affability? And, as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes, and sometime of as sad gravity. A man for all seasons.
  • Robert Whittington, in Vulgaria (1520), as quoted in Thomas More than and Erasmus (1965) by Ernest Edwin Reynolds, p. 22

Misattributed [edit]

• As for rosemarie, I lett information technology run alle over my garden walls,
  not onlie because my bees love it,
  but considering 'tis the herb sacred to remembrance and therefore to friendship,
  whence a sprig of it hath a impaired linguistic communication that maketh ye called emblem at our funeral wakes and in our buriall grounds.
  • Actually written in 1852 by Anne Manning in her fictional novel The Household of St Thomas More, every bit if a diary entry was made by his daughter Margaret; so, although written equally said by the graphic symbol Thomas More in the novel by Anne Manning, it was not actually said by Thomas More. This quote on Rosemary is often quoted in gardening books – the name of the herb in the quote is usually updated to the modern spelling of Rosemary (also known as Rosmary, Rosmarie, Rosemarie, Rosmarinus, Rosmarine, Romero), and a number of other words may also be modernised. The misattribution was outset noted in Garden Guild at lochac.sca.org/herb/, where the alternate spellings of Rosemary are likewise sourced.

External links [edit]

Wikisource has original works written past or about:

• Works by Thomas More at Projection Gutenberg
  • Utopia at Project Gutenberg
• Utopia at Bartleby.com
• Thomas More Studies database: contains several of More's English works, including dialogues, early poetry and letters, as well as journal articles and biographical material

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Source: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_More

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