Wolf Hall

You can have a silence full of words.

There is a silence which precedes speech, there is a silence which is instead of speech.

who will enforce the laws if the judges are swimming for their lives?

There is always somebody ready to claim that these are the end times, and nominate his neighbour as the Antichrist.

I have never understood where the line is drawn, between sacrifice and self-slaughter.

A lie is no less a lie because it is a thousand years old.

it's all very well planning what you will do in six months, what you will do in a year, but it's no good at all if you don't have a plan for tomorrow.

That's right, he thinks: make life as hard as possible for yourself.

You learn nothing about men by snubbing them and crushing their pride. You must ask them what it is they can do in this world, that they alone can do.

For centuries Rome has asked them to believe what only children could believe.