Quotes from Richard Marius

We bring to everything we read the expectations we have built up by a lifetime of reading.

Here is a lesson to brand in fire across any young historian's mind: If you try to do too much, you will not do anything.

Age was authority in the sixteenth century, and More's deep reverence for his father showed a general habit of mind that offered a way of managing uncertainty. If the authority of experience can be trusted, there may be in respect for age a way of fending off questions that might otherwise overwhelm.

There was a stubborn strain of authoritarianism in More that embarrasses some of his modern admirers. Having never revolted against his own father, he could be merciless to those who dared to rebel against the surrogate fathers that every society raises as a standard of order in the world.