WIST

MORE: I should in fairness add that my taste in music is reputedly deplorable.
HENRY: Your taste in music is excellent. It exactly coincides with my own!

Robert Bolt (1924-1935) English dramatist
A Man for All Seasons (1966)

MORE: If we lived in a State where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly. And we’d live like animals or angels in the happy land that needs no heroes. But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought, and have to choose, to be human at all . . . why then perhaps we must stand fast a little — even at the risk of being heroes.

Robert Bolt (1924-1935) English dramatist
A Man for All Seasons (1966)

MORE: You’d be a fine teacher. Perhaps even a great one.
RICH: And if I was, who would know it?
MORE: You, your pupils, your friends, God. Not a bad public, that.

Robert Bolt (1924-1935) English dramatist
A Man for All Seasons (1966)

MORE: When a man takes an oath, Meg, he’s holding his own self in his hands, like water. And if he opens his fingers, then he needn’t hope to find himself again.

Robert Bolt (1924-1935) English dramatist
A Man for All Seasons, Act 2 (1960)
Also in the 1966 screen adaptation.

MORE: I will not take the oath. I will not tell you why I will not.
NORFOLK: Then your reasons must be treasonable!
MORE: Not “must be;” may be.
NORFOLK: It’s a fair assumption!
MORE: The law requires more than an assumption; the law requires a fact.

Robert Bolt (1924-1935) English dramatist
A Man for All Seasons, Act 2 (1960)

NORFOLK: I’m not a scholar, as Master Cromwell never tires of pointing out, and frankly I don’t know whether the marriage was lawful or not. But damn it, Thomas, look at those names… You know those men! Can’t you do what I did, and come with us for friendship?
MORE: And when we stand before God, and you are sent to Paradise for doing according to your conscience, and I am damned for not doing according to mine, will you come with me, for friendship?
CRANMER: So those of us whose names are there are damned, Sir Thomas?
MORE: I don’t know, Your Grace. I have no window to look into another man’s conscience. I condemn no one.
CRANMER: Then the matter is capable of question?
MORE: Certainly.
CRANMER: But that you owe obedience to your King is not capable of question. So weigh a doubt against a certainty — and sign.
MORE: Some men think the Earth is round, others think it flat; it is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the King’s command make it round? And if it is round, will the King’s command flatten it? No, I will not sign.

Robert Bolt (1924-1935) English dramatist
A Man for All Seasons, Act 2 (1960)

CROMWELL: You don’t seem to appreciate the seriousness of your position.
MORE: I defy anyone to live in that cell for a year and not appreciate the seriousness of his position.
CROMWELL: Yet the State has harsher punishments.
MORE: You threaten like a dockside bully.
CROMWELL: How should I threaten?
MORE: Like a Minister of State, with justice!
CROMWELL: Oh, justice is what you’re threatened with.
MORE: Then I’m not threatened.

Robert Bolt (1924-1935) English dramatist
A Man for All Seasons, Act 2 (1960)

ROPER: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
MORE: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
ROPER: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
MORE: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

Robert Bolt (1924-1935) English dramatist
A Man for All Seasons, Act I (1967)

If we’ve told lies, you’ve told half-lies. And a man who tells lies, like me, merely hides the truth, but a man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it.

Robert Bolt (1924-1935) English dramatist
Lawrence of Arabia [Dryden] (1962)