"Thomas More" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that she had declared this doctrine to be part of the original revelation. It is difficult, impossible, to imagine, I grant;—but how is it difficult to believe? Yet Macaulay thought it so difficult to believe, that he had need of a believer in it of talents as eminent as Sir Thomas More, before he could bring himself to conceive that the Catholics of an enlightened age could resist "the overwhelming force of the argument against it." "Sir Thomas More," he says, "is one of the choice specimens of wisdom and virtue; ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Reformers and the Life of Sir Thomas More, written by William Roper, are my other authorities, though I touched somewhat unwillingly on ground already lighted up by Miss Manning in her ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... this true hero, after his capture, that he was worth more for hanging than any other purpose, reminds one, by its combination of wit, wisdom, and self-devotion, of Sir Thomas More. ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... to my mind, a deeper interest in the book than that which arises from its good-humoured flagellation of Persian peccadilloes. Just as no one who is unacquainted with the history and leading figures of the period can properly appreciate Sir Thomas More's "Utopia," or "Gulliver's Travels," so no one who has not sojourned in Persia, and devoted considerable study to contemporary events, can form any idea of the extent to which "Hajji Baba" is a picture of actual personages, and a record of ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... is all. We must in ourselves see the necessary reason of every fact,—see how it could and must be. So stand before every public and private work; before an oration of Burke, before a victory of Napoleon, before a martyrdom of Sir Thomas More, of Sidney, of Marmaduke Robinson; before a French Reign of Terror, and a Salem hanging of witches; before a fanatic Revival and the Animal Magnetism in Paris, or in Providence. We assume that we under like influence should be alike affected, and should achieve the like; and we aim ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... whatever tendency are so cast forth upon the waters to sink or swim at hazard. I acknowledge, friend, your present muttering, Utopian! Arcadian! Formosan! to be not ill-founded: the sketch is a hasty one; but though it may have somewhat in common with the vagaries of Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and that king in impudence, George Psalmanazar, still I stand upon this ground, that many an ill-used author wants protection, and that society, for its own sake as well as his, ought to supply a court for literary reputation. Some poor ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the mere discussion of this matter in itself, is an indication of the changing public opinion, as is the fact that such legislation has already been enacted in two states, which are only now putting into action the recommendation made centuries ago by such social philosophers as Plato and Sir Thomas More. A sense of justice outraged by the wanton destruction of new-born children, may in time unite with that ardent tide of rising enthusiasm for the nurture of the young, until the old barriers of silence and inaction, behind ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... returned to tillage; but the Act only applied to fourteen counties therein enumerated. The enclosing for sheep-runs still went on, however, often with ruthless selfishness; houses and townships were levelled, says Sir Thomas More, and nothing left standing except the church, which was turned ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... sold into service to work out their sentences. Thus did the practical settlers attempt to carry out one of Sir Thomas More's Utopian notions. Upon the whole, I think I should rather have a Nipmuck squaw cooking in my kitchen, or a Pequot warrior digging in my garden, than to have a white burglar or ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... growing up in the place of war and theology, meant the dawn of material prosperity, of the rule of law, and of a new intelligence diffused through the opinions and industries of men. Of this there is no better exposition than Sir Thomas More's "Utopia." More was a devout Catholic. He wore a hair shirt next his skin; he flogged himself; he gave his life for a theological principle. But he was also a Christian in a wider sense. He appreciated the importance ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... most ingenious and amusing Essay, entitled "Comments on Sterne," which excited a good deal of interest at the time of its publication. This discovery may be considered, in some measure, as the result of the BIBLIOMANIA. In my edition of Sir Thomas More's Utopia, a suggestion is thrown out that even Burton may have been an imitator of Boisatuau [Transcriber's Note: ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... build a ship. Most readers will remember the distinction which Sir W. Scott represents Louis XI. (with great appreciation of that monarch's character), as drawing between an oath taken on a false piece and one taken on a piece of the true cross. Sir Thomas More, a very devout believer in relics, says ("Works," p. 119), that Luther wished, in a sermon of his, that he had in his hand all the pieces of the Holy Cross; and said that if he so had, he would throw them there as never sun should ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... James's Palace Promenade in the Mall Suggested Improvements Pimlico The Ty-bourn Isle of St. Peter's Chelsea Ranelagh Chelsea Buns —— Hospital Villany of War Invalid without Arms A Centenarian Securities of Peace Caesar's Ford The Botanic Garden Don Saltero's Sir Thomas More Sir Hans Sloane Battersea Waste of Public Wealth Cupidity of Trade Insufficiency of Wealth Mr. Brunel's Saw Mills —— Shoe Manufactory Evils of Machinery Lord Bolingbroke's House York House An American Aloe Reflections on Pride Wandsworth Phenomena of Rivers Distilleries ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... that the phrase "the tale of a tub" (which was familiarly known in Sir Thomas More's time) had reference to the tub ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... his "Discourse on Gardens," he mentions incidentally that he had been in Greece and on the coast of Asia Minor. A brief "Annual Register" is carried down as far as 1535, in which year he perhaps died. One of his latest entries is the execution of Bishop Fisher and of Sir Thomas More. Some other facts about him might perhaps be collected; but his personal history could add little to the interest of his book, which is its own sufficient recommendation. It will be evident, from the description which ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... IV, but 'very much felony', because Hayward 'had stolen many of his sentences and conceits out of Cornelius Tacitus' (Apophthegms, 58). Hayward and Bacon had a precursor in the author of The History of King Richard the Thirde, generally attributed to Sir Thomas More, and printed in the collection of his works published in 1557. It was known to the chroniclers, but it did not affect the writing of history. Nor did George Cavendish's Life and Death of Thomas Wolsey, which they likewise used ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... Creseide is quoted in the life of Sir Thomas More, given in Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography. More's daughter said to him, when he was in prison, "Father, I can no further goe; I am come, as Chaucer said of Cressid ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... to be ill educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them—you first make thieves and then punish them.—SIR THOMAS MORE. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... thee see me safe up, but for my coming down I can shift for myself," were the last words of Sir Thomas More when ascending the scaffold. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... was progressing rapidly in culture. She was no longer behind her neighbors. The Renaissance movement can scarce be said to have begun in England before 1500, yet by 1516 her famous chancellor, Sir Thomas More, was writing histories and philosophies. In 1522 the King himself sighed for literary fame and gave opportunity for many future satirists by writing a Latin book against the Lutherans. The Pope conferred upon his royal champion a title, "Defender ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... light in the hall. His host conducted him through a door to the left, closing it after him and leaving them in absolute darkness. Suddenly a luminous globe, strangely decorated, shone faintly in the centre of an immense room that seemed to Thomas more splendidly appointed than any he had ever seen on the stage or read of ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... into an allegory of the Christian religion, at the same time maintaining them to be an exact and veritable history. In the Middle Ages the legend seems to have been half-forgotten until revived by the discovery of America. It helped to form the Utopia of Sir Thomas More and the New Atlantis of Bacon, although probably neither of those great men were at all imposed upon by the fiction. It was most prolific in the seventeenth or in the early part of the eighteenth century, when the human mind, seeking for Utopias ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... Christ, and in his parallel Lives of Greeks and Romans, the most famous of his many writings, he took occasion to paint an Ideal Commonwealth as the conception of Lycurgus, the half mythical or all mythical Solon of Sparta. To Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus, as well as to Plato, Thomas More and others have been indebted for some part of the shaping ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... found a friend and patron in Sir Thomas More,—Henry the Eighth's great Lord Chancellor; and a sight of some of his works won him, ere long, the favor of the King himself. He was appointed Court Painter, with apartments at the palace, and a yearly salary of two hundred florins, (or thirty pounds, equal to about ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... that many of those older writers who were "Socialists before Socialism," Plato, for instance, and Sir Thomas More, did very roundly abolish private property altogether. They were extreme Communists, and so were many of the earlier Socialists; in More's Utopia, doors might not be fastened, they stood open; one hadn't even a private room. These earlier writers wished to insist ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... not less evidently designed to represent the Established Church. Allusions to the marriage of the clergy are profusely scattered through her speeches. Her deceased husband was probably meant for Sir Thomas More—"a merry man" to the last moment of his existence—who might well be supposed by a slight poetic license to have foreseen in the infancy of Elizabeth her future backsliding and fall from the straight path "when she came to age." The passing ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... extravaganza and burlesque. I had written many pieces of this description, full of puns and comic songs, and they had had a fair success, but my best piece had been a treatment of English history during the Reformation period, in the course of which I had introduced Cranmer, Sir Thomas More, Henry the Eighth, Catherine of Arragon, and Thomas Cromwell (in his youth better known as the Malleus Monachorum), and had made them dance a break-down. I had also dramatised "The Pilgrim's Progress" for a Christmas Pantomime, and made an important scene of Vanity Fair, ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... time of Shakespeare, the fashion of writing lives of men of letters had not yet arisen. The art of biography could hardly be said to be even in its infancy, for the most notable early examples, such as the lives of Wolsey by Cavendish and of Sir Thomas More by his son-in-law in the sixteenth century, and Walton's handful in the seventeenth, are far from what the present age regards as scientific biography. The preservation of official records makes it possible for the modern ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... Roper and Sir Thomas More. Agnes and William Wirt. Mary and John Evelyn. Theodosia and Aaron Burr. Maria and Richard Edgeworth. Madame de Stael and Necker. Letitia Landon and ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... conceives to be necessary for the state: political, legislative or judicial reforms, even when loudly demanded, and favored by authority, are hard to be effected, and not seldom generations come and go without effecting them. The republics of Plato, Sir Thomas More, Campanella, Harrington, as the communities of Robert Owen and M. Cabet, remain Utopias, not solely because intrinsically absurd, though so in fact, but chiefly because they are innovations, have no support in experience, and require for their realization ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... exile, and took up his residence in England, where he fell under the influence of Owen's agitation and became a convert to his Socialistic views. During this time of exile, too, he became acquainted with the "Utopia" of Sir Thomas More and was fascinated by it. The idea of writing a similar work of fiction to propagate his Socialist belief impressed itself upon his mind, and he wrote "a philosophical and social romance," entitled "Voyage to Icaria," which was ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... words (verba nuda et praetextata) in speaking of very gross things. He makes two daring quotations, one from Piso's Annals and the other from Sallust, to show that he had good precedent; and he cites Herodotus, Seneca, Suetonius, Plutarch, Erasmus, Thomas More, Clement of Alexandria, Arnobius, Lactantlas, Eusebius, and the Bible itself, as examples occasionally of the very reverse of a squeamish euphemism. Of even greater interest is a passage in which he foresees the charges of cruelty, ruthlessness, and breach of literary etiquette, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... But all higher minds are much more akin than they are different: genius is of all ages, and there is perhaps more uniformity in excellence than in mediocrity. The sublimer intelligences of mankind—Plato, Dante, Sir Thomas More—meet in a higher sphere above the ordinary ways of men; they understand one another from afar, notwithstanding the interval which separates them. They are 'the spectators of all time and of all existence;' their works live for ever; and ...
— Sophist • Plato
... from very different Motives, the Consciousness of a well-spent Life, and the prospect of a happy Eternity. If the ingenious Author above mentioned was so pleased with Gaiety of Humour in a dying Man, he might have found a much nobler Instance of it in our Countryman Sir Thomas More. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... fourteenth century has ever been found. But translations, even of the whole Bible, older than Wcyliffe's are, by at least two eminent witnesses, said to have existed. "As for olde translacions, before Wycliffe's time," says Sir Thomas More, "they remain lawful and be in some folkes handes." "The hole byble," he declares (Dyalogues, p. 138, ed. 1530), "was long before Wycliffe's days, by vertuous and well learned men, translated into the English tong." And Cranmer, in his prologue to the second edition of the "Great Bible," bears ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various |
