Sir Thomas More Quotes. S. Austin Allibone, comp. 1880. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay

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S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Sir Thomas More


Mirth and cheerfulness are but the due reward of innocence of life. Sir Thomas More.	1

Could necessity infallibly produce quarries of stone, which are the materials of all magnificent structures? Sir Thomas More.	2

The whole evolution of ages, from everlasting to everlasting, is so collectively and presentifically represented to God at once, as if all things which ever were, are, or shall be, were at this very instant really present. Sir Thomas More.	3

To love God, which was a thing far excelling all the cunning that is possible for us in this life to obtain. Sir Thomas More.	4

To be humble to superiors is duty; to equals, is courtesy; to inferiors, is nobleness; and to all, safety: it being a virtue that, for all her lowliness, commandeth those souls it stoops to. Sir Thomas More.	5

Providence would only initiate mankind into the useful knowledge of her treasures, leaving the rest to employ our industry, that we might not live like idle loiterers. Sir Thomas More.	6

I love to feel myself of an express and settled judgment and affection in things of the greatest moment. Sir Thomas More.	7

Love and enmity, aversation and fear, are notable whetters and quickeners of the spirit of life in all animals. Sir Thomas More.	8

Divine Providence has spread her table everywhere, not with a juiceless green carpet, but with succulent herbage and nourishing grass, upon which most beasts feed. Sir Thomas More.	9

There is even room for philosophy in the courts of princes, but not for that speculative philosophy that makes everything to be alike fitting at all times; but there is another philosophy that is more pliable, that knows its proper scene, accommodates itself to it, and teaches a man, with propriety and decency, to act that part which has fallen to his share. Sir Thomas More.	10

The Christian religion, rightly understood, is the deepest and choicest piece of philosophy that is. Sir Thomas More.	11

If certain prescience of uncertain events imply a contradiction, it seems it may be struck out of the omnisciency of God, and leave no blemish behind. Sir Thomas More.	12

The whole evolution of times and ages, from everlasting to everlasting, is collectedly and presentifickly represented to God at once, as if all things and actions were at this very instant really present and existent before him. Sir Thomas More.	13

Quit not the world out of any hypocrisy, sullenness, or superstition, but out of a sincere love of true knowledge and virtue. Sir Thomas More.	14

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. Therefore, I pray you be of good cheer, and take all the household with you to church, and there thank God, both for that he has given us, and for that he has taken from us, and for that he hath left us; which, if it please him, he can increase when he will, and if it please him to leave us yet less, at his pleasure be it. Sir Thomas More: Letter to his Wife.	15




They [the Utopians] have but few laws, and such is their constitution that they need not many. They do very much condemn other nations whose laws, together with the comments on them, swell up so many volumes, for they think it an unreasonable thing to oblige men to obey a body of laws that are both of such a bulk and so dark that they cannot be read or understood by every one of the subjects. They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters as well as to wrest laws; and therefore they think it is much better that every man should plead his own cause, and trust it to the judge. Sir Thomas More: Utopia.	16

[The Utopians] detest war as a very brutal thing: and which, to the reproach of human nature, is more practised by men than any sort of beasts; and they, against the custom of almost all other nations, think there is nothing more inglorious than that glory which is gained by war. They would be both troubled and ashamed of a bloody victory over their enemies; and in no victory do they glory so much as in that which is gained by dexterity and good conduct, without bloodshed. Sir Thomas More: Utopia.	17

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