Thomas More Quotes

Alas, how quickly the gratitude owed to the dead flows off, how quick to be proved a deceiver.

And one of the elders of the city , said , speak to us of good and evil. And he answered : You are good in countless ways , and you are not evil when you are not good .

I believe ingratitude is the original sin. I believe if Adam and Eve had been grateful for the garden of Eden they had, they would not have been so focused on the one tree they didn't have.

Sin writes histories, goodness is silent.

Over the last few years, I've been focusing on questions having to do with the self, and questions having to do with morality. I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.

If ingratitude be numbered among the serious sins, then gratitude takes its place among the noblest of virtues.

Men's evil manners live in brass: their virtues we write in water.

According to the Stoics, all vice was resolvable into folly: according to the Christian principle, it is all the effect of weakness.

People don't just want to be rich and successful, they want to be good.

Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is Good.

Gratitude, being nearly the greatest of human duties, is also nearly the most difficult.

The memory of benefits is a frail defence against ingratitude.

The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.

There are some who write, talk, and think, so much about vice and virtue, that they have no time to practice either the one or the other.

It would seem that the ingratitude, whereby a subsequent sin causes the return of sins previously forgiven, is a special sin. For, the giving of thanks belongs to counter passion, which is a necessary condition of justice. But justice is a special virtue. Therefore this ingratitude is a special sin. Thanksgiving is a special virtue. But ingratitude is opposed to thanksgiving. Therefore ingratitude is a special sin.

What is the real relation between happiness and goodness? It is only within a few generations that men have found courage to say that there is none.

Whereas happiness is the highest good, being a realization and perfect practice of virtue, which some can attain, while others have little or none of it, the various qualities of men are clearly the reason why there are various kinds of states and many forms of government; for different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.

I'm not a believer in predetermined fates, being rewarded for one's efforts. I'm not a believer in karma. The reason why I try to be a good person is because I think it's the right thing to do. If I commit fewer bad acts there will be fewer bad acts, maybe other people will join in committing fewer bad acts, and in time there will be fewer and fewer of them.

To be good to the vile is to throw water into the sea.

Vices and virtues are of a strange nature, for the more we have, the fewer we think we have.

You can't be right by doing wrong; you can't be wrong by doing right.

Virtuous and vicious every man must be, few in the extreme, but all in the degree.

I believe in doing good for good's sake.