Quotes from Robert Bolt

My master Thomas More would give anything to anyone. Some say that's good and some say that's bad, but I say he can't help it and that's bad... because some day someone's going to ask him for something that he wants to keep; and he'll be out of practice.

To what purpose? I am a dead man. (To Cromwell) You have your desire of me. What you have hunted me for is not my actions, but the thoughts of my heart. It is a long road you have opened. For first men will disclaim their hearts and presently they will have no hearts. God help the people whose Statesmen walk your road.

A man takes an oath only when he wants to commit himself quite exceptionally to the statement, when he wants to make an identity between the truth of it and his own virtue; he offers himself as a guarantee. And it works.

Anyway, the above must serve as my explanation and apology for treating Thomas More, a Christian Saint, as a hero of selfhood.

THE KING: Not the Holbein Henry, but a much younger man, clean-shaven, bright-eyed, graceful and athletic. The Golden Hope of the New Learning throughout Europe. Only the levity with which he handles his absolute power foreshadows his future corruption.

More is a man of an angel's wit and singular learning; I know not his fellow. For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness, and affability? And as time requireth a man of marvellous mirth and pastimes; and sometimes of as sad gravity: a man for all seasons. Robert Whittinton (1520) He was the person of the greatest virtue these islands ever produced. Jonathan Swift (1736)

The world is deceived by nothing. It must be given something by which to seem deceived.

A death-warrant requires a royal signature. And I signed my own. And if your Great and Virgin Queen should wonder why I signed it, you are to tell her this: There is more living in a death that is embraced than in a life that is avoided across three-score years and ten. And I embrace it-thus!

Even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh.

Good marriages are made in heaven. Or some such place.

I wish we could all have good luck, all the time! I wish we had wings! I wish rain water was beer!

The law is not a 'light' for you or any man to see by; the law is not an instrument of any kind. The law is a causeway upon which so long as he keeps to it a citizen may walk safely.

When a man takes an oath... he's holding his own self in his own hands. Like water.

It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales!

The man who tells lies hides the truth, but the man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it.

Death comes for us all. Even for kings he comes.

Even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks toward us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh.