"Sir Thomas More" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Prison of Lady Mary Grey. Studio of Thomas Gainsborough. Tomb of John Kyrle. Tomb of William Hogarth. Grave of Izaak Walton. Grave of William Penn. Monument of Wren. Grave of Lady Rachel Russel. Edgeworthstown. Garden of Sir Thomas More. Esher—Residence of Jane Porter. Grave of Sir Richard Lovelace. Grave of Grace Aguilar. Dwelling of Edmund Burke. Remains of Clarendon House. Flaxman's Monument. Village of Eyam. Monument of Edward Bird, R.A. Grave of Mrs. Hofland. ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... may be regarded as the 'captain' ('arhchegoz') or leader of a goodly band of followers; for in the Republic is to be found the original of Cicero's De Republica, of St. Augustine's City of God, of the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, and of the numerous other imaginary States which are framed upon the same model. The extent to which Aristotle or the Aristotelian school were indebted to him in the Politics has been little recognised, and the recognition is the more necessary because it is not made by ...
— The Republic • Plato
... the Cardinal, who, as Lord Chancellor, could not entirely absent himself from Westminster, was four times attacked by it, and Dean Colet, a far less robust man, had it three times, and sank at last under it. Sir Thomas More went to see his beloved old friend, and knowing Ambrose's devotion, let the young man be his attendant. Nor could those who saw the good man ever forget his peaceful farewells, grieving only for the old mother who had lived with him in the Deanery, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the Life of Sir Thomas More, by William Roper, and his Letters to Margaret Roper and others. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... from the family; thinking that, if so, it would give an up-to-date touch to the article. She had fully decided now to write it. But Mary Stopperton could not inform her. They had ended up in the chapel of Sir Thomas More. He, too, had "given up things," including his head. Though Mary Stopperton, siding with Father Morris, was convinced he had now got it back, and that with the remainder of his bones it rested in the tomb ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... it was Sir Thomas More who drew this answer from the ancient, and if this be so, it certainly fixes the date. "Maister More," says Latimer, "was once sent in commission into Kent to help to trie out (if it might be) what was the cause of Goodwin Sands and ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... the divine law permits." And as this proved only a stepping-stone to the unconditional headship of the Church, he regarded it as his own fault. He refused submission, and put himself in communication with the Imperialists with a view to effective intervention. Sir Thomas More, the most modern and original mind among the men of his time, showed greater caution. He admitted the right of Parliament to determine the succession, and made no struggle for Mary Tudor, as he had made none for her mother. He did not openly ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... coats of arms over the porch are those of himself and his wife, Catharine Mowbray. Their tomb is in the church too—that big carved monument in the side chapel. They had seven children—five sons and two daughters. The eldest son, Sir Godfrey Courtenay, married a relation of Sir Thomas More. Her name is mentioned in ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... there are in England. As for thieves, they are for the most part begotten from the same cause; for it is against Nature that any man should venture his life, limb, or liberty, for a wretched livelihood, whereas moderate labour will produce a better. But of this see Sir Thomas More, in the ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... the roof is the widest known. The roof, of chestnut, is exceedingly fine. Only think, my dear fellow, what events have transpired on this spot. The following trials took place here: Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, for high treason, 1521; Sir Thomas More, 1535; Duke of Somerset, for treason, 1552; Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, for his attachment to Mary, Queen of Scots; Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, 1601, and Earl of Southampton; Guy Fawkes and the Gun-powder Plot conspirators; ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... ages been a pastime of noble minds to try to depict a perfect state of society. Forty years before Shakespeare's birth, Sir Thomas More published his "Utopia" to the world. Bacon intended to do the same thing in the "New Atlantis," but never completed the work, while Sir Philip Sidney gives us his dream in his "Arcadia." Montaigne ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... it may be that in one or other of these Rastell printed the undated edition of Linacre's Grammar, which bears the address, 'ye sowth side of paulys.' But in 1520 he moved to 'the Mermayd at Powlys gate next to chepe syde.' There he printed The Pastyme of People, and Sir Thomas More's Supplicacyon of Souls, besides several interludes and two remarkable jest-books, The Twelve mery gestys of one called Edith and A Hundred Mery Talys. The last named became one of the most popular ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... Belinda Black, and her children were Potty Black and Sir Thomas More Black, this last being a creature of noble mien and a ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... small house with a little chapel attached to it in a road in Chelsea where some Frenchwomen, who were exiled from their own country, have come to dwell. It is built on Sir Thomas More's garden, and it possesses within its boundaries the mulberry tree under which the chancellor was sitting when they came to fetch him to the Tower. It is a poor little house with very poor inmates, and a poor little chapel. But in that chapel night and ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... function of the Thames in the magnificent life of that village. The secret residence of Turner in Chelsea, under the strange alias of Admiral Booth, excited George's admiration; he liked the idea of hidden retreats and splendid, fanciful pseudonyms. But the master-figure of Chelsea for George was Sir Thomas More. He could see Sir Thomas More walking in his majestic garden by the river with the King's arm round his neck, and Holbein close by, and respectful august prelates and a nagging wife in the background. And ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... architecture. His singular book, "The Broad Stone of Honour," was first published in 1822, and repeatedly afterwards in greatly enlarged form. In its final edition it consists of four books entitled respectively "Godefridus," "Tancredus," "Morus" (Sir Thomas More), and "Orlandus," after four representative paladins of Christian chivalry. The title of the whole work was suggested by the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, the "Gibraltar of the Rhine." Like Fouque, Digby was inspired by the ideal of knighthood, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Sir Thomas More's Utopia was written in the years 1515-16, when its author's age was about thirty-seven. He was a young man of twenty when Columbus first touched the continent named after the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci, who made his ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... vessels, just as nature renders pleasurable the discharges from other parts."[2] Luther, again, always compared the sexual to the excretory impulse, and said that marriage was just as necessary as the emission of urine. Sir Thomas More, also, in the second book of Utopia, referring to the pleasure of evacuation, speaks of that felt "when we do our natural easement, or when we be doing the act of generation." This view would, however, scarcely deserve serious ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... consider as essentially ignominious an accident, which was indeed to be deprecated, but which might have happened to the most innocent of mankind. Then would she set forth some illustrious example, which her reading easily furnished, of a Phocion or a Socrates unjustly condemned; of a Raleigh or a Sir Thomas More, to whom late posterity had done justice; and by soothing my fancy with some such agreeable parallel, she would make me almost to triumph in my disgrace, and ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... that his own seat was safe, and that any peril incurred had been so incurred simply on behalf of Sir Thomas. Nothing, according to Mr. Griffenbottom's views, could be more unjust than to expect that he should take any part in the matter. Trigger, too, had endeavoured to impress this upon Sir Thomas more than once or twice. But this had been all in vain; and Sir Thomas, acting under the advice of his own attorney, had at last compelled Mr. Griffenbottom to take his share in the matter. Mr. Griffenbottom did not scruple to say that he was very ill-used, and to hint that any unfair ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... endure more miseries, and greater far, Than my weak-hearted enemies dare offer. What news abroad? Crom. The heaviest, and the worst, Is your displeasure with the king. Wol. God bless him! Crom. The next is, that Sir Thomas More is chosen Lord chancellor in your place. Wol. That's somewhat sudden: But he's a learned man. May he continue Long in his highness' favor, and do justice For truth's sake and his conscience; that his bones, When he has run his course, and sleeps in blessings, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... labour from agriculture to manufacture by interfering with, the restrictions imposed by the trade-guilds (which always aimed at making themselves close bodies), the object of such legislation being quite as much to prevent idleness as to relieve distress. Nevertheless, the evil grew. Sir Thomas More in his introduction to the Utopia, written early in the next reign, gives a vigorous sketch of the prevalent vagabondage just before the death of Cardinal Morton, adding to the causes above mentioned ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... SIR THOMAS MORE, the famous Chancellor, who preserved his humor and wit to the last moment, when he came to be executed on Tower-hill, the headsman demanded his upper garment as his fee; "Ah! friend," said he, taking off his cap, "that, I think, is my ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... that the destruction of the whole family was even then impending. Nor was there anything very improbable in this statement. The English King had already inaugurated his sanguinary career. One of the most eminent English laymen, Sir Thomas More, and one of her best ecclesiastics, Bishop Fisher, had been accused and beheaded, to satisfy the royal caprice. When the King's tutor and his chancellor had been sacrificed, who ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... their queens, and their mistresses, and their lords, were all amateurs. So was our Henry VIII., and James I., who "wished he could be chained to a shelf in the Bodleian." The middle age gives us Richard de Bury, among ecclesiastics, and the Renaissance boasts Sir Thomas More, with that "pretty fardle of books, in the small type of Aldus," which he carried for a freight to the people of Utopia. Men of the world, like Bussy Rabutin, queens like our Elizabeth; popes like Innocent X.; financiers like Colbert (who made the Grand Turk send ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... the neighborhood of Chelsea, we determined to look upon the few broken walls that once inclosed the residence of Sir Thomas More, a man who, despite the bitterness inseparable from a persecuting age, was of most wonderful goodness as well as intellectual power. We first read over the memories of him preserved by Erasmus, Hoddesdon, Roper, Aubrey, his own namesake, and others. It is pleasant to muse over the past; pleasant ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... courage, he made a very just distinction between constitutional courage and courage from reflection. "Sir Thomas More," said he, "would not probably have mounted a breach so well as a sergeant who had never thought of death. But a sergeant would not on a scaffold have shewn the calm resolution of Sir ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... married John Middleton, son of Sir John Middleton, of Stockeld Park, co. Yorkshire ("Visitation of Essex," 1588). She afterwards became the second wife of Sir Thomas More, and her arms may be seen on the Chelsea tomb—Ermine a fesse chequy (Notes and Queries, 4th Series, iv. 61; Gent. Mag., ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... literature. His other plays, besides the two first named, were Eufemia di Messina; Iginia di Asti; Leoniero da Dordona, already named as having been thought out at Spielberg; his Gismonda; l'Erodiade; Ester d'Engaddi; Corradino; and a play upon Sir Thomas More. He wrote also poems, Cantiche, of which the best are Eligi e Valfrido and Egilde; and, in his last years, a religious manual on the Duties ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... made Colet Dean of St. Paul's, and he showed at once that he had lost none of his zeal. He carried on his lectures in the cathedral and preached constantly, and another warm friend made now was Sir Thomas More, who earnestly helped him in his strenuous endeavours to improve the cathedral statutes, to reform abuses, and to increase the preaching power. He was a rich man, and in 1509 he employed much of his wealth—about L40,000 present value—in the foundation ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... I had even commenced my breakfast—that a stranger was announced to me. And who, think you, should that stranger turn out to be? Nothing less than the Nephew of the late Abbe Rive. His name was MORENAS. His countenance was somewhat like that which Sir Thomas More describes the hero of his Utopia to have had. It was hard, swarthy, and severe. He seemed in every respect to be "a travelled man." But his manners and voice were mild and conciliating. "Some one had told him that I had written about the Abbe ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... because, I believe, it may pass for a universal rule, that in every diocese governed by bishops of the Whig species, the clergy (especially the poorer sort) are under double discipline, and the laity left to themselves. The opinion of Sir Thomas More, which he produces to prove the ill consequences or insignificancy of Convocations, advances no such thing, but says, "if the clergy assembled often, and might act as other assemblies of clergy in Christendom, much good might have come: but the misfortune lay in their long disuse, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... bloody, and many such have had to meet their death. They have done so generally with becoming manliness. Even though they may have been rebels against the powers of the day, their memories have been made green because they have fallen like brave men. Sir Thomas More, who was no rebel, died well, and crowned a good life by his manner of leaving it. Thomas Cromwell submitted to the axe without a complaint. Lady Jane Grey, when on the scaffold, yielded nothing ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... were not equal, by many degrees, to the glory of taking it away." I had the honour to have much conversation with Brutus; and was told, "that his ancestor Junius, Socrates, Epaminondas, Cato the younger, Sir Thomas More, and himself were perpetually together:" a sextumvirate, to which all the ages of the world cannot add ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... Rome was growing up to crush in its iron grasp all States save its own, Plato withdraws his eyes from the world, to open them in his dreamy "Atlantis." Just in the grimmest period of English history, with the axe hanging over his head, Sir Thomas More gives you his "Utopia." Just when the world is to be the theatre of a new Sesostris, the sages of France tell you that the age is too enlightened for war, that man is henceforth to be governed by pure reason, and live in a paradise. Very pretty reading all this to a man like me, Lenny, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Burford I saw the house of Mr. Lenthal, the descendant of the Speaker. The front is good; and a chapel, connected by two or three arches, which let the garden appear through, has a pretty effect; but the inside of the mansion is bad, and ill-furnished. Except a famous picture of Sir Thomas More's family, the portraits are rubbish, though celebrated. I am told that the Speaker, who really had a fine collection, made his peace by presenting them to Cornbury, where they were well known, till the Duke of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... now in close contact with the most innocently wild, secluded, and apparently happy state of things imaginable—a real Utopia, such as Sir Thomas More dreamt not of, being actually here, with no trace of abortive politics or irritating ordinance. Here was contentment in the savage wilderness—communion with Nature in all her unstained purity and beauty. One ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... west, though he had sometimes taken more power than he ought, and no king could ever be the same as a patriarch or father bishop. So they refused, and Henry cut off the heads of two of the best—Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More— though they had been his great friends. Sir Thomas More's good daughter Margaret, came and kissed him on his way to be executed; and afterwards, when his head was placed on a spike on London Bridge, she came by night in a boat and took it home ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rather unexplored subject, one gets many a glimpse of famous characters in interesting relations. Erasmus says that Sir Thomas More, "adolescens, comoediolas et scripsit et egit," and while a page with Archbishop Moreton, as plays were going on in the palace during the Christmas holidays, he would often, showing his schoolboy accomplishment, step ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... previous more humane temper. Sole, too, in escaping the doom of sudden death which the historian solemnly records in the cases of the rest. So that even if we had not the eminent example of Marcus Aurelius and Sir Thomas More, we might still infer from this that it is no less possible for the man of enlightened ability and culture, than for the ignorant bigot, to find himself, almost of necessity, a chief instrument of religious coercion. Doubtless this energetic Puritan denouncer ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... nobly from the days of Ralegh and Sir Thomas More, down to the days of Gordon of Khartoum, and down again to our own days when the youth of England upheld the invincible valour, self-sacrifice, and glory of their race in the greatest of all wars,—all have been filled with the love of God and have found ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... in the forms of policy which we have adopted for the establishment and perpetuation of our freedom, Lafayette found the most perfect form of government. He wished to add nothing to it. He would gladly have abstracted nothing from it. Instead of the imaginary Republic of Plato, or the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, he took a practical existing model in actual operation here, and never attempted or wished more than to apply it faithfully to his ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... Resolution of Socrates proceeded 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
... King Henry VI. borrowed so largely, sinned as deeply. Hall's authorities among French writers were Monstrelet, Bouchet, Mayer, Argentan, Gile Corozet, and the annals of France and Aquitaine—and of English writers, Fabyan, Caxton, John Harding, Sir Thomas More, Basset, Balantyne, and the Chronicle ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... Renascence fertilized the intellectual soil of England for the rich harvest that was to come. The court poetry which clustered round Wyatt and Surrey, exotic and imitative as it was, promised a new life for English verse. The growth of grammar-schools realized the dream of Sir Thomas More, and brought the middle-classes, from the squire to the petty tradesman, into contact with the masters of Greece and Rome. The love of travel, which became so remarkable a characteristic of Elizabeth's age, quickened ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... was built and the land 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 into ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... produced, I imagine a short account of his life here will not be disagreable to the readers, especially as all Biographers of the Poets before me have taken notice of him, and ranked him amongst the number of Bards. Sir Thomas More was born in Milk-street, London, A.D. 1480. He was son to Sir John More, Knight, and one of the Justices of the King's-Bench, a man held in the highest esteem at that time for his knowledge in the law and his integrity in the administration of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... Anthology, the other Drummond's Ascent of Man. There were other books on a quaintly carved shelf, under the picture which had been turned to the wall. He ran over the titles. There were a number of French novels, Ely's Socialism, Sir Thomas More's Utopia, St. Pierre's Paul and Virginia, and a dozen other volumes; there were Balzac and Hugo, and Dante's Divine Comedy. Amid this array, like a black sheep lost among the angels, was a finger-worn and faded little volume bearing the name Camille. Something about this one ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... a truism to say that the "social question," the question how best to organize society, is as old as society itself. Great thinkers all down the ages, from Plato to Sir Thomas More, from More to Jean Jacques Rousseau, from Rousseau to Saint Simon, Fourier, Louis Blanc, Lassalle, and Karl Marx, have devoted their attention to it. The French Revolutionists tried to solve it, and the revolutionary movement of 1848 took up the ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... at any time limited himself to mathematics. Both before his freshman year and during it he had read hard and deeply on general subjects. His habit was to analyze on paper whatever he studied, and he had dealt thus in 1861 (aged eighteen) with all Sir Thomas More, Bolingbroke, and Hobbes. Among the papers for 1862 there is preserved such an analysis of Coleridge's political system; a note on the views of the Abbe Morellet, with essays on comparative psychology, the association of ideas, and the originality of the anti-selfish affections. These are ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... Johnson. Macaulay was at school at Aspenden. John Scott, the Quaker poet, lived at Amwell; Lee, the dramatist, was born at Hatfield. Skelton probably stayed at Ashridge just before the Dissolution of the Monasteries; Sir Thomas More lived awhile at Gobions, North Mimms. Cowper was born at Berkhampstead. The county has been immortalised by Walton and Lamb ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... Sir Thomas More, apart from any arguments about the more mystical meshes in which he was ultimately caught and killed, will be hailed by all as a hero of the New Learning; that great dawn of a more rational daylight which for so many made mediaevalism seem a mere darkness. Whatever ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... himself when travelling, his panegyric on Moria, or folly; which, authorised by the pun, he dedicated to Sir Thomas More. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of the Reformation (1509-1558). Classical, Theological, and Miscellaneous Literature: Sir Thomas More and others. Poetry: Skelton, Surrey, and Sackville; the Drama.—2. The Age of Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon, and Milton (1558-1660). Scholastic and Ecclesiastical Literature. Translations of the Bible: Hooker, Andrews, Donne. Hall, Taylor, Baxter; other Prose Writers: Fuller, Cudworth, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the manuscripts are some things of Sir Thomas More. I beg you to pass an hour in looking on them, and procure a transcript of the ten or twenty first lines of each, to be compared with what I have; that I may know whether they are yet ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the positive ideals of the socialist Utopias have been sufficiently lauded by scores of writers from Sir Thomas More to Bellamy and Mr. H. G. Wells. What it is desired to emphasize here is the "negative and destructive" (from the standpoint of the established order) aspects of socialist ideals; for it is the Nihilism of Socialism that explains why Mr. Street's "educated and professional" ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... the reign of Henry VIII Thomas Cromwell Suppression of Monasteries Their opposition to the revival of Learning Their exceeding corruption Their great wealth and its confiscation Ecclesiastical courts Sir Thomas More: his execution Main feature of Henry VIII.'s anti-clerical measures Fall of Cromwell Rise of Cranmer His characteristics His wise moderation His fortunate suggestions to Henry VIII Made Archbishop of Canterbury Difficulties of his position Reforms made by the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... make or distribute these early translations in England. Numbers of copies were brought into the country, however, and did much to promote the cause of the Reformation. After Henry VIII. had broken with the Pope the new English Bible circulated freely among the people. Tyndal and Sir Thomas More carried on a vigorous controversy in English upon some of the questions at issue between the Church and the Protestants. Other important contributions to the literature of the Reformation were the homely sermons preached at Westminster and at Paul's Cross by Bishop Hugh Latimer, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... fanciful, chimerical: from "Utopia"—an imaginary island, represented by Sir Thomas More, in a work called "Utopia," as enjoying the greatest perfection in politics ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... written in English, such as the works of that very great philosopher Roger Bacon, of whom this isle ought to be prouder than it is. To this rule, however, I have been constrained to make a few exceptions. Sir Thomas More's *Utopia* was written in Latin, but one does not easily conceive a library to be complete without it. And could one exclude Sir Isaac Newton's *Principia*, the masterpiece of the greatest physicist that the world has ever seen? The law of gravity ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... has become a fixed custom to travel wide and far. Only the clumsiness of communications limit us now, and every facilitation of locomotion widens not only our potential, but our habitual range. Not only this, but we change our habitations with a growing frequency and facility; to Sir Thomas More we should seem a breed of nomads. That old fixity was of necessity and not of choice, it was a mere phase in the development of civilisation, a trick of rooting man learnt for a time from his new-found friends, the corn and the vine and the hearth; the untamed spirit ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... century Erasmus gave a new impulse in England to the study of Latin and Greek, and Sir Thomas More in his "Utopia" (wherein he imagines an ideal commonwealth with community of property), unconsciously gave birth to a word (utopia), which has ever since been used to designate the ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... eyes were playing catch-glance. His daughters kissed each other; and he became seated between them in the taxi. The most unobservant of men, he parted from them in the hall without having perceived anything except that they were rather silent; and, going to his study, he took up a Life of Sir Thomas More. There was a passage therein which he itched to show George Laird, who ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a collection of portraits of illustrious individuals connected with the University, by Holbein, Vandyke, Kneller, Reynolds, Wilkie, and others. Among these are Henry VIII., the Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas More, by Holbein. Among the sculptures are a bust of the Duke of Wellington by Chantrey, and a brass statue of the Earl of Pembroke, Chancellor of the University from 1616 to 1630, which is said to have been executed ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... of these punishments, and perhaps the most common of all, was that of scourging demons out of the body of a lunatic. This method commended itself even to the judgment of so thoughtful and kindly a personage as Sir Thomas More, and as late as the sixteenth century. But if the disease continued, as it naturally would after such treatment, the authorities frequently felt justified in driving out ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... descended of the family of the famous and learned Sir Thomas More, sometime Lord Chancellor of England: as also, from that worthy and laborious Judge Rastall, who left posterity the vast Statutes of the Law of ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... been dead, and is turned to dust. He always was as dry as dust, even when he was alive, but he was a great man. But the famous Englishman, Sir Thomas More, wrote more engagingly; and does he not tell us, in his "Utopia," that any nation's holding unused a piece of ground needed for the nourishment of other people is ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... are aware of the transitions and fluctuation, which our language experienced in the intermediate space comprised between Chaucer and Sir Thomas More; and still greater between Robert of Gloucester, 1278, and John Trevisa, or his contemporary Wickliffe, who died 1384, know, to a certainty, that the writers enumerated by Chatterton, without surmounting ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... dreary routine of duty by pleasantries which in no way interfered with the course of justice. One of the earliest of our witty judges, whose brilliant sayings have come down to us, was Henry VIII's Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, who lost his head because he would not acknowledge his king as head of the Church. To Sir Thomas Manners, Earl of Rutland, who had made a somewhat insolent remark, the Lord Chancellor quietly replied, ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... the letter of master More against John Fryth." To a motto taken from 1 Cor. xi. is subjoined the following date, "Anno M.CCCCC.XXXIII., v. daye of Apryll," together with a printer's device (two hands pointing towards each other). This Tract was promptly answered by Sir Thomas More (A.D. 1533, "after he had geuen ouer the offyce of Lorde Chauncellour of Englande"), and is described by him as "the poysoned booke whych a nameles heretike hath named the Supper of the Lorde" (Works, pp. 1035, seqq., ed. Rastell). From the following passage of the reply, we learn that ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... Clown in Shakespeare is commonly taken for a licensed jester, or domestick fool. We are not to wonder that we find this character often in his plays, since fools were, at that time, maintained in all great families, to keep up merriment in the house. In the picture of Sir Thomas More's family, by Hans Holbein, the only servant represented is Patison the fool. This is a proof of the familiarity to which they were admitted, not by the great ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... stand forth the unpitying accessory of the unpitying guillotine. Ay, sir, it was a judicial tribunal in England, surrounded by all the forms of law, which sanctioned every despotic caprice of Henry the Eighth, from the unjust divorce of his queen, to the beheading of Sir Thomas More; which lighted the fires of persecution that glowed at Oxford and Smithfield, over the cinders of Latimer, Ridley, and John Rogers; which, after elaborate argument, upheld the fatal tyranny of ship-money against the patriotic resistance of Hampden; which, in defiance ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... is believed to have been b. at North Mimms, Herts. He was a friend of Sir Thomas More, and through him gained the favour of Henry VIII., and was at the Court of Edward VI. and Mary, for whom, as a young Princess, he had a great regard. Being a supporter of the old religion, he enjoyed her favour, but on the accession of Elizabeth, he left the country, and ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Literature and the Fine Arts, and from the choice of its illustrations, deservedly so. Thus, among the painters, who have furnished subjects for the engravers, we have Holbein, Claude, and Primaticcio; and two from Sir Thomas Lawrence. The engraving from Holbein, Sir Thomas More and his Family,—is a novelty in an Annual, and is beautifully executed by Ensom. It has all the quaintness of the great master, whose pictures may be called the mosaic of painting. The Autumnal Evening, engraved by Dean, after Claude, is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... Church." On 29th April, 1535, after a trial lasting two[66] days, the three Carthusians and Father Richard Reynolds were condemned to be drawn, hanged, and quartered. On their way to the scaffold they passed their fellow-prisoner, Sir Thomas More, who saw them from his prison cell. "Lo, dost thou not see, Meg," he said to his daughter Margaret, "that these blessed fathers be now as cheerfully going to their death as bridegrooms to their marriage." When the scaffold was reached Father ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... bald jokes, not recollecting that this was a necessary and essential part of the design. Nor is it strange that Steele, who was perhaps not very well acquainted with the history of literature, should have misconceived the nature of the publication, when we learn from an epistle of Sir Thomas More to Erasmus, that some of the stupid theologasters themselves, who were held up to ridicule, received it with approbation as ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... frequently hear of gentlemen at the bar making ten or fifteen thousand pounds a year by their practice; and a solicitor in one single suit, (the trial of Warren Hastings) is said to have gained no less than thirty-five thousand pounds! How different three centuries ago, when Roper, in his life of Sir Thomas More, informs us, that though he was an advocate of the greatest eminence, and in full business, yet he did not by his profession make above four hundred pounds per annum. There is, however, a common tradition on the other hand, that Sir Edward Coke's gains, at the latter end of this century, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Trolius and 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 Dulcarnon, to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... of the brave old knight, Sir Thomas More, put a ban upon hunting in his Utopia. Alas and alack for the wayward proclivities of our Utopians, predaceous creatures all, hunting was to them as the breath of their nostrils, for to them, unlike the sons of Adam, it was given—with ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... 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 published soon after his return to Paris, in 1839. ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... suburb of London, on the N. of the Thames; famous for its hospital for old and disabled soldiers, and the place of residence of sundry literary celebrities, among others Sir Thomas More, Swift, Steele, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Every one worships as he pleases. Only a few hours of work a day are necessary, and all find genuine pleasure in that. In Utopia life is given to be a joy. No advantage is taken of the weak or the unfortunate. Twentieth-century dreams of social justice are not more vivid and absorbing than Sir Thomas More's. It is pleasant to think that the Roman Catholic church in 1886 added to her list of saints this lovable man, "martyr to ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... to wait. She stole up to her room, and taking up one of her best-beloved books, "The Household of Sir Thomas More," lost herself for a while in the noble sorrows of Margaret Roper. But even this could not hold her long in her restless frame of mind, so she went downstairs again, and out into the soft, golden September air, and fell to pacing up and down the gravel walk before the house ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... honourable gentleman to impute to the Union evils which, as he knows better than any other man in this house, existed long before the Union? Post hoc: ergo, propter hoc is not always sound reasoning. But ante hoc: ergo, non propter hoc is unanswerable. The old rustic who told Sir Thomas More that Tenterden steeple was the cause of Godwin sands reasoned much better than the honourable and learned gentleman. For it was not till after Tenterden steeple was built that the frightful wrecks on ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... born. "Your late honored father," his friend Gibson wrote the founder of Pennsylvania, "dwelt upon Great Tower Hill, on the east side, within a court adjoining to London Wall." But the memories of honored father and more honored son must yield in that air to such tragic fames as those of Sir Thomas More, of Strafford, and above these and the many others in immediate interest for us, of Sir Harry Vane, once governor of Massachusetts, who died here among those whom the perjured second Charles played false when he came back to the throne of the perjured first Charles. ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... In Sir Thomas More, for instance, on the scaffold, and Anne Boleyn, in the Tower, when, grasping her neck, she remarked, that it "was too slender to trouble the headsman much." During one part of the French Revolution, it became a fashion to ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... 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
... John of France, brought captive by the Black Prince. In 1535 Sir Thomas More was tried here; later there were many trials, the greatest of which was that of King Charles I., followed by that of the regicides, brought to justice and the fruit of their crimes in a way they had not expected when they took prominent parts in the first great drama. ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... 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 ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... the Execution of Thomas Cranmer: MS. Harleian, 422. Another account gives among the causes which Cole mentioned, that "it seemed meet, according to the law of equality, that, as the death of the Duke of Northumberland of late made even with Sir Thomas More, Chancellor, that died for the Church, so there should be one that should make even with Fisher, Bishop of Rochester; and because that Ridley, Hooper, and Ferrars were not able to make even with that man, it seemed that Cranmer should be joined with them to fill up their part of equality."—Foxe, ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... of learning would have been gratified beyond measure, by the profound conversations of Grotius and Father Petau: but what a treat must it have been, to have assisted with one, two, or three good listeners, at the conversations between Erasmus and Sir Thomas More! ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... their economic, independence, and then no doubt led by the cities of the West—the ones furthest from Boston—there will be a Renaissance of European intelligence in this great daughter of Europe such as will astonish even Paris itself. But this event, as Sir Thomas More says so sadly of his Utopia, is rather to be hoped ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... more moral than Jeremiah, Ruskin is superior to Isaiah; Ingersoll, the Atheist, is a nobler moralist and a better man than Moses; Plato and Marcus Aurelius are wiser than Solomon; Sir Thomas More, Herbert Spencer, Thoreau, Matthew Arnold, and Emerson are worth more to us than ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... Learning, 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 ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... have been writers in modern days who have shown plausible grounds for doubting that the murder really took place. Two contemporary writers, they say, mention the fact only as a report; a third certainly states it, incorrectly, at least, in point of time; and Sir Thomas More, who is the only one remaining, relates it with certain details which it does seem difficult to accept as credible. More's account, however, must bear some resemblance to the truth. It is mainly founded upon the confession of two of the murderers, and is given by the writer as the most ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... the disgrace of Wolsey, which happened nearly a year before his death, (1529,) three remarkable men began to figure in English politics and history. These were Sir Thomas More, Thomas Cranmer, and Thomas Cromwell. More was the most accomplished, most learned, and most enlightened of the three. He was a Catholic, but very exemplary in his life, and charitable in his views. In moral elevation of character, and beautiful serenity of soul, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... local government, of whatever nature it is, is not sufficiently representative. The men who work upon the road, day in day out, have not sufficient opportunity of saying, in open meeting of their fellow citizens, where their particular trade shoe pinches. It is, as old Sir Thomas More said very truly, the matter of the rich legislating for the poor, which is ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... success of motor-cars (those far greater, because unrestricted, bores), railways have taken on for me some such charm as the memory of the posting coaches had for the greybeards of my boyhood, some such charm as aeroplanes may in the fulness of time foist down for us on motor-cars. 'But I rove,' like Sir Thomas More. And I seem to think that a cheap literary allusion will make you excuse that vice. To resume my breathless narrative I decided that I would slowly follow ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... the purple stain of the earth sorrow. A grave man, knowing what steps of men keep truest time to the chanting of Death. Having grave friends also;—the same singing heard far off, it seems to me, or, perhaps, even low in the room, by that family of Sir Thomas More; or mingling with the hum of bees in the meadows outside the towered wall of Basle; or making the words of the book more tunable, which meditative Erasmus looks upon. Nay, that same soft Death-music is on the lips even of Holbein's Madonna. Who, among many, is the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... temple of Baal. Nor did the celebrated classical example of Antigone more forcibly illustrate the persevering fortitude of passive heroism and enduring love in woman's gentle bosom, than did the interesting, lovely Constantia. Like the renowned daughter of Sir Thomas More, "she seemed to have forgotten herself, being ravished with the entire love of her dear father," and fearful of danger only as it pointed at him. She turned her eyes upon the court with a boldness unusual to their general expression, to see if in any of their faces ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... assailable as Mill. His political economy is a mere muddle; his political views are obviously distorted by accidental prejudices; and the whole book is desultory and disjointed. In a dialogue with the ghost of Sir Thomas More, he takes the opportunity of introducing descriptions of scenery, literary digressions, and quaint illustrations from his vast stores of reading to the confusion of all definite arrangement. Southey is ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... at the north door, and those of our Lady of Grace and of St. Uncumber. This last saint is supposed to be a foreign princess of early times, styled also in England St. Wilgeforte. A peck of oats was a favourite offering at her shrine in St. Paul's by those who wished for favours; and according to Sir Thomas More she owed her popular name because wives unhappy in their union so offered in the hope that she would uncumber (i.e., disencumber) them of their husbands. The disgrace of Thomas Cromwell put a temporary stop to actions of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... 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
... excellent determination of goodness, what philosopher's counsel can so readily direct a prince as the feigned Cyrus in Xenophon? Or a virtuous man in all fortunes, as AEneas in Virgil? Or a whole commonwealth, as the way of Sir Thomas More's Utopia? I say the way, because where Sir Thomas More erred, it was the fault of the man, and not of the poet; for that way of patterning a commonwealth was most absolute, though he, perchance, hath not so absolutely performed it. For ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... because it was curious in itself, and curiously illustrative of the characters of the performers. Before dinner some mention was made of the portraits of the Speakers in the Speaker's House, and I asked how far they went back. Macaulay said he was not sure, but certainly as far as Sir Thomas More. 'Sir Thomas More,' said Lady Holland, 'I did not know he had been Speaker.' 'Oh, yes,' said Macaulay, 'don't you remember when Cardinal Wolsey came down to the House of Commons and More was in the chair?' and then he told the whole of that well-known transaction, and all ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... enough existed to 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 shine ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... 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
... houses on the south side, looking upon Lincoln's Inn Fields; and Dr. Johnson, who lived at the sign of the Golden Anchor, Holborn Bars. There were also the Bishops of Ely, Sir Christopher Hatton, Francis Bacon, Sir Thomas More, Charles Dickens, Fulke Greville, Thomas Chatterton, Lord Russell, ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... growth of national literature. This indeed goes back far beyond the sixteenth century, but none the less it is from this time that the writers not only of imagination, but also of learning, began to express themselves each in his own vernacular. Sir Thomas More, it is true, wrote his Utopia in Latin, but it was in English that it had its great circulation. Bacon used both languages, but it is on English editions of his works that his fame chiefly rests. In particular we find ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... work, compel us to seek an independent origin, and to look for some other translator less immediately under Wyclif's influence. The freedom with which the Bible admittedly circulated for many years, and the well-known allusion by Sir Thomas More to an English translation untouched by any taint of heresy, point also in the same direction. That the second version is really only a revision of the first can hardly be adduced as a strong argument on the other side. The ethics of literary acknowledgment were not ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... justification, though he had the scroll of his accounts in his hands, but tears it to pieces before the tribunes. Socrates'[344] condemnation of himself to be maintained in all honor in the Prytaneum,[345] during his life, and Sir Thomas More's[346] playfulness at the scaffold, are of the same strain. In Beaumont and Fletcher's "Sea Voyage," Juletta tells the stout captain and ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... a novel may be an essay rather than a story. No less a writer than Swift used the medium of fiction for his most brilliant criticism of life; his fables, apart from their satire, are often mere essays. Plato, Sir Thomas More, William Morris, and Mr. H. G. Wells have not disdained to transmit their philosophy under the domino of romance or myth. Some of the greatest poets—Ruskin and Pater for example—have chosen prose for their instrument of expression. If that theory ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... (Vol. ii., pp. 286. 342.).—Sir Thomas More details in his Dialoge, with his usual quaintness, the attributes and merits of many saints, male and female, highly esteemed in his day, and, amongst others, makes special mention of St. Uncumber, whose proper name, it appears, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... proclamations the force of laws. In the action of the two Houses the Crown seemed to have discovered a means of carrying its power into regions from which a bare despotism has often had to shrink. Henry might have dared single-handed to break with Rome or to send Sir Thomas More to the block. But without Parliament to back him he could hardly have ventured on such an enormous confiscation of property as was involved in the suppression of the monasteries or on such changes ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... disloyalty were required to sign an oath of allegiance to Henry, and to Elizabeth as his successor, and to acknowledge the supremacy of the king in church and state. This resulted in the death of some prominent men in the realm, among them Sir Thomas More. In the preamble of the oath prescribed by law, the legality of the king's marriage with Anne was asserted, thus implying that his former marriage with Catharine was unlawful. More was willing to declare his allegiance to the infant Elizabeth, as the king's ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... entered into a long discourse, which Master Silas would at sundry times have interrupted, but that Sir Thomas more than once frowned upon him, even as he had frowned heretofore on young Will, who thus began ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... the very time that negotiations were in progress for the return of Tyndale to his native shores from Antwerp, and he declared that he was "very joyous to have his realm destitute of such a person." The Practice of Prelates was partly written in answer to the Dialogue of Sir Thomas More, who was commissioned to combat the "pernicious and heretical" works of the "impious enemies of the Church." Tyndale wrote also a bitter Answer to the Dialogue, and this drew forth from More his abusive and scurrilous Confutation, which did little credit to the writer ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... opinion in it near to the opinions of Boheme; I pray God keep that book out of England." [Sidenote: January 21, 1521] Wolsey himself, biassed perhaps by his ambition for the tiara, labored to suppress the heresy. Most important of all, Sir Thomas More was promptly and decisively alienated. {283} It was More, according to Henry VIII, who "by subtle, sinister slights unnaturally procured and provoked him" to write against the heretic. His Defence of the Seven Sacraments, in reply to the Babylonian ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... you to observe, however, what Sir Thomas More says of it, and nobody will question that Sir Thomas More was a good Catholic and a competent witness. 'These epistles,' he says, 'are the delight of everyone. The wise enjoy the wit; the blockheads of monks take them seriously, and believe that they have been written to ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Sir Thomas More advised an author, who had sent him his manuscript to read, "to put it in rhyme." Which being done, Sir Thomas said, "Yea, marry, now it is somewhat, for now it is rhyme; before it ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... went to England with letters of introduction to Sir Thomas More, Chancellor to King Henry VIII. Sir Thomas treated him very kindly and set him to work making portraits of his own family. During the time he was living at More's home in Chelsea, the King himself, used frequently to visit there, and on one occasion ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... caused by her declaration that should Henry persist in his intention of divorcing Catherine he "should no longer be king of this realm ... and should die a villain's death." Even such men as Fisher, bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More, corresponded with Barton. On his return from France in 1532 Henry passed through Canterbury and is said to have allowed the nun to force herself into his presence, when she made an attempt to terrify him into ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... 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; and the doctrine of transubstantiation ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... 20 The wasting hectic, and the quartan fever, Which doth of physic make a mockery, The gout it cures, and helps ill breaths for ever, Whether the cause in teeth or stomach be; And though ill breaths were by it but confounded, Yet that vild[529] medicine it doth far excel, Which by Sir Thomas More[530] hath been propounded, For this is thought a gentleman-like smell. O, that I were one of these mountebanks Which praise their oils and powders which they sell! 30 My customers would give me coin with thanks; I for this ware, forsooth,[531] a tale would tell: Yet would I use none of these ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... religious and polemical works a catalogue is given in vol. vi. of the Clarendon Press edition of his History, and in Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual. The following translations deserve to be mentioned:—Utopia, written in Latin by Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England: translated into English (1685); A Relation of the Death of the Primitive Persecutors, written originally in Latin, by L.C.F. Lactantius: Englished by Gilbert Burnet, D.D., to which he hath made a large ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... this strange sensation of the ludicrous in circumstances with which a different feeling would have harmonized better. Byron represents it as rising in extreme grief: it is, however, I suspect, greatly more common in extreme danger; and all the instances which the poet himself gives in his note—Sir Thomas More on the scaffold, Anne Boleyn in the Tower, and those victims of the French Revolution "with whom it became a fashion to leave some mot as a legacy"—were all jokers rather in circumstances of desperate and hopeless peril than of sorrow. It is, however, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... refused all connection with government, and all the influence which office could bestow, rather than deny their principles, or aid in doing wrong. Yet I never heard them called either idiots or over-scrupulous. Sir Thomas More need never have mounted the scaffold, had he only consented to take the oath of supremacy. He had only to tell a lie with solemnity, as we are asked to do, and he might not only have saved his life, but, as the trimmers ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... incomprehensible monstrosity. Macbeth is called to denounce life as "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury," and "signifying nothing." Macbeth must be shunned by the reformer as the monk repels the visits of Satan in the desert. He must share the hopefulness of Sir Thomas More. Utopia is possible here, now, and everywhere, though execution is likely to be the penalty of too close ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... thinkers of all civilized nations are his posterity, and are tinged with his mind. How many great men Nature is incessantly sending up out of night, to be his men,—Platonists! the Alexandrians, a constellation of genius; the Elizabethans, not less; Sir Thomas More, Henry More, John Hales, John Smith, Lord Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Ralph Cudworth, Sydenham, Thomas Taylor; Marcilius Ficinus, and Picus Mirandola. Calvinism is in his Phaedo: Christianity is in it. ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of Chelsea at a point in the eastern boundary in the Pimlico Road, we have on the right-hand side Holbein Place, a modern street so named in honour of the great painter, who was a frequent visitor at Sir Thomas More's house in Chelsea. Holbein Place curves to the west, ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... the old masters contains some valuable specimens of early Flemish art, and some extremely interesting historical portraits, the gem of the collection being a wonderfully fine portrait by Holbein of Sir Thomas More. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Sir Thomas More's Utopia was written in 1516, with its well-known passage describing contemporary enclosures in terms similar to those used in the statutes of thirty years before, and complaining ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley |
