He finds he cannot think of the dying men at all. Into his mind instead strays the picture of More on the scaffold, seen through the veil of rain: his body, already dead, folding back neatly from the impact of the axe. The cardinal when he fell had no persecutor more relentless than Thomas More. Yet, he thinks, I did not hate him. I exercised my skills to the utmost to persuade him to reconcile with the king. And I thought I would win him, I really thought I would, for he was tenacious of the world, tenacious of his person, and had a good deal to live for. In the end he was his own murderer. He wrote and wrote and he talked and talked, then suddenly at a stroke he cancelled himself. If ever a man came close to beheading himself, Thomas More was that man. Hilary Mantel
Some Similar Quotes
  1. The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends. - Friedrich Nietzsche
  2. The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people. - G.k. Chesterton
  3. The life of the enemy . Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy's staying alive. - Friedrich Nietzsche
  4. People who are two faced, usually forget which mask they are wearing at some point in their life. - Anthony T. Hincks
  5. The truth may not set you free, but used carefully, it can confuse the hell out of your enemies. - Laurell K. Hamilton
More Quotes By Hilary Mantel
  1. I think now that this is the great division between people. There are people who find life hard and those who find it easy. There are those who have a natural, in-built, expectation of happiness, and there are those who feel that happiness is not...
  2. If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to ­music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go...
  3. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.
  4. Evidence is always partial. Facts are not truth, though they are part of it — information is not knowledge. And history is not the past — it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past. It’s the record of what’s...
  5. When men decided women could be educated - this is what I think - they educated them on the male plan; they put them into schools with mottoes and school songs and muddy team games, they made them were collars and ties. It was a...
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