Thomas More

The minds of some of our statesmen, like the pupil of the human eye, contract themselves the more, the stronger light there is shed upon them.

The heart that is soonest awake to the flowers / Is always the first to be touched by the thorns.

The only thing as challenging as getting tangled in the underbrush of relationship is trying to write about it.

Marriage is an Athenic weaving together of families, of two souls with their individual fates and destinies, of time and eternity—everyday life married to the timeless mysteries of the soul.

Alas! how light a cause may move / Dissension between hearts that love!

Intimacy begins with oneself. It does no good to try to find intimacy with friends, lovers and family if you are starting out from alienation and division within yourself.

The heart is a mystery—not a puzzle that can’t be solved, but a mystery in the religious sense: unfathomable, beyond manipulation, showing traces of the finger of God.

Who can help loving the land that has taught us / Six hundred and eighty-five ways to dress eggs?

The family the soul wants is a felt network of relationship, an evocation of a certain kind of interconnection that grounds, roots, and nestles.

Faith, fanatic Faith, once wedded fast / To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last.

When once the young heart of a maiden is stolen, / The maiden herself will steal after it soon.

True conversation is an interpenetration of worlds, a genuine intercourse of souls, which doesn’t have to be self-consciously profound but does have to touch matters of concern to the soul.

Nobody owns anything but everyone is rich — for what greater wealth can there be than cheerfulness, peace of mind, and freedom from anxiety?

The ordinary acts we practise every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.

Friend, be not afraid of thy office, thou sandiest me to God.

For if you suffer your people 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, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.

When the destroyer comes, his first act will be to destroy all the books.

Nay, tempt me not to love again: There was a time when love was sweet; Dear Nea! had I known thee then, our souls had not been slow to meet! But oh! this weary heart hath run So many a time the rounds of pain, Not even for thee, thou lovely one! Would I endure such pangs again?

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

They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet be thought of less value than it is.

‘Tis woman, woman, rules us still.

I would uphold the law if for no other reason but to protect myself.

After all, those fine clothes were once worn by a sheep, and they never turned it into anything better than a sheep.

This hath not offended the king.

See, the conquering hero comes!

I pray you, master Lieutenant, see me safe up, and my coming down let me shift for my self.

Fare well my dear child and pray for me, and I shall for you and all your friends that we may merrily meet in heaven.

Is not this house as nigh heaven as my own?

Anyone who campaigns for public office becomes disqualified for holding any office at all.

Your sheep, that were wont to be so meek and tame, and so small eaters, now, as I hear say, be become so great devourers, and so wild, that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves.

Oft, in the stilly night,

’Tis the last rose of summer

I never nursed a dear gazelle,

No, there’s nothing half so sweet in life

The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone,

The harp that once through Tara’s halls