Thomas More quotes

Thomas More was an English lawyer, philosopher, and statesman who served as Lord Chancellor under King Henry VIII. Best known for his book "Utopia," he was a prominent Renaissance humanist. He became a Catholic martyr after refusing to support the king's separation from the Catholic Church. Here are 50 of his quotes:

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

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

Thomas More

If honor were profitable, everybody would be honorable.

Thomas More

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

Thomas More

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

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

For men use, if they have an evil turn, to write it in marble and whoso doth us a good turn we write it in dust.

Thomas More

And it will fall out as in a complication of diseases, that by applying a remedy to one sore, you will provoke another; and that which removes the one ill symptom produces others.

Thomas More

For when they see the people swarm into the streets, and daily wet to the skin with rain, and yet 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.

Thomas More

This hath not offended the king.

Thomas More

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

Now there was a young gentleman which had married a merchant's wife. And having a little wanton money, which him thought burned out the bottom of his purse, in the first year of his wedding took his wife with him and went over sea, for none other errand but to see Flanders and France and ride out one summer in those countries.

Thomas More

And when the devil hath seen that they have set so little by him, after certain essays, made in such times as he thought most fitting, he hath given that temptation quite over. And this he doth not only because the proud spirit cannot endure to be mocked, but also lest, with much tempting the man to the sin to which he could not in conclusion bring him, he should much increase his merit.

Thomas More

I do no­body harm, I say none harm, I think none harm, but wish everybody good. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith, I long not to live.

Thomas More

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; as if there were no difference to be made between the killing a man and the taking his purse, between which, if we examine things impartially, there is no likeness nor proportion. God has commanded us not to kill, and shall we kill so easily for a little money?

Thomas More

Plato by 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 skin with rain, and yet 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.

Thomas More

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; as the high priest is also known by his being preceded by a person carrying a wax light.

Thomas More

Whoever loveth me, loveth my hound.

Thomas More

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

Thomas More

This vice [Pride] does not measure happiness so much by its own conveniences, as by the miseries of others.

Thomas More

I think putting thieves to death is not lawful; and it is plain and obvious that it is absurd and of ill consequence to the commonwealth that a thief and a murderer should be equally punished.

Thomas More

The island of Utopia is in the middle two hundred miles broad, and holds almost at the same breadth over a great part of it, but it grows narrower towards both ends.

Thomas More