From kings and priests and statesmen war arose, / Whose safety is man's deep embittered woe, / Whose grandeur his debasement.
The right divine of kings to govern wrong.
L'exactitude est la politesse des rois=--Punctuality is the politeness of kings.
True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings; / Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.
Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.
This principle is old, but true as fate,-- Kings may love treason, but the traitor hate.
High on a throne of royal state, which far Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, Satan exalted sat, by merit rais'd To that bad eminence.
Trees on a riverbank, a woman in another man's house, and kings without counselors go without doubt to swift destruction.
To Harmodius, descended from the ancient Harmodius, when he reviled Iphicrates for his mean birth, "My nobility," said he, "begins in me, but yours ends in you."[733-1]
Philip being arbitrator betwixt two wicked persons, he commanded one to fly out of Macedonia and the other to pursue him.
Delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi=--Whatsoever devilry kings do, the Greeks must pay the piper.
So our kings seek out no disguises. They do not mask themselves in strange garments to appear such, but they are accompanied by guards and halberdiers. Those armed puppets who have hands and power for them alone, those trumpets and drums which go before them, and those legions round about them, make the firmest tremble. They have not dress only, but power; we need an highly refined reason to regard as an ordinary man the Grand Turk, in his superb seraglio, surrounded with forty thousand janissaries.
To know how to dissemble is the knowledge of kings.
Lamachus chid a captain for a fault; and when he had said he would do so no more, "Sir," said he, "in war there is no room for a second miscarriage." Said one to Iphicrates, "What are ye afraid of?" "Of all speeches," said he, "none is so dishonourable for a general as 'I should not have thought of it.'"
A soldier told Pelopidas, "We are fallen among the enemies." Said he, "How are we fallen among them more than they among us?"
What was my morning's thought, at night's the same; / The poor and rich but differ in the name. / Content's the greatest bliss we can procure / Frae 'boon the lift; without it kings are poor.
"Listen, O isles, unto me, and hearken ye people from far: The Lord hath called me by my name even from the womb of my mother; he hath hid me in the shadow of his hand, he hath made my words like a sharp sword, and said: Thou art my servant, in whom I will be glorified. And I said, Lord, have I laboured in vain? have I spent my strength for nought? yet is my judgment with thee, O Lord, and my work before thee. When the Lord, who has formed me from the womb of my mother to be wholly for himself, in order to bring Jacob and Israel again to him, said unto me: Thou shalt be glorious in my sight, and I will be thy strength. It is a light thing that thou shouldst convert the tribes of Jacob; I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the ends of the earth. These are the things which the Lord hath said to him that humbleth his soul to him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers. Princes and kings shall worship thee because the Lord is faithful that hath chosen thee.
Mult? regum aures et oculi=--Kings have many ears and eyes.
Like the driving of Jehu, the son of Nimshi: for he driveth furiously.
Pauper enim non est cui rerum suppetit usus. / Si ventri bene, si lateri pedibusque tuis, nil / Diviti? poterunt regales addere majus=--That man is not poor who has a sufficiency for all his wants. If it is well with your stomach, your lungs, and your feet, the wealth of kings can add no more.
The people once belonged to the kings; now the kings belong to the people.
Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade / To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep, / Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy / To kings that fear their subjects' treachery.= 3
Cedant carminibus reges, regumque triumphi=--Kings, and the triumphs of kings, must yield to the power of song.
Is it not a noble farce, wherein kings, republics, and emperors have for so many ages played their parts, and to which the whole vast universe serves for a theatre?
"Now in the days of these kings will God raise up a Kingdom, which shall never be destroyed, nor ever be delivered up to another people.
_Special predictions._--They were strangers in Egypt without any private possessions, in that country or in any other, when Jacob dying and blessing his twelve children declared to them that they should possess a great land, and foretold in particular to the family of Judah that the kings who would one day govern them should be of his race, and that all his brethren should be subject to him.
Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to Joy, and makes royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods.
A book for children, like the myths and folktales that tend to slide into it, is really a blueprint for dealing with life. For that reason, it might have a happy ending, because nobody ever solved a problem while believing it was hopeless. It might put the aims and the solution unrealistically high – in the same way that folktales tend to be about kings and queens – but this is because it is better to aim for the moon and get halfway there than just to aim for the roof and get halfway upstairs.
Ultima ratio regum=--The last argument of kings.
Here I and sorrows sit; / Here is my throne; bid kings come bow to it.
Josephus, in the whole history of Esdras, says not a single word of this restoration.--II. Kings, xvii. 37.
The people have the right to murmur, but they have also the right to be violent, and their silence is the lesson of kings.
King Agis said, "The Laced?monians are not wont to ask how many, but where the enemy are."
Poets are far rarer births than kings.--_Ben Jonson._
An nescis longas regibus esse manus?=--Do you not know that kings have long,
Not kings alone--the people too have their flatterers.
We can make majors and officers every year, but not scholars; kings can invest knights and barons, as Sigismund the emperor confessed.
Implements of war and subjugation are the last arguments to which kings resort.--_Patrick Henry._
What have kings that privates have not too, / Save ceremony, save general ceremony?
What people call 'mere words' are in truth the monuments of the fiercest intellectual battles; triumphant arches of the grandest victories won by the intellect of man. When man had formed names for body and soul, for father and mother, and not till then, did the first art of human history begin. Not till there were names for right and wrong, for God and man, could there be anything worthy of the name of human society. Every new word was a discovery, and these early discoveries, if but properly understood, are more important to us than the greatest conquests of the kings of Egypt and Babylon. Not one of our greatest explorers has unearthed more splendid palaces, than the etymologist. Every word is the palace of a human thought, and in scientific etymology we possess the charm with which to call these ancient thoughts back to life.
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains: round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Here are sands, ignoble things, Dropt from the ruined sides of kings.
Being about to pitch his camp in a likely place, and hearing there was no hay to be had for the cattle, "What a life," said he, "is ours, since we must live according to the convenience of asses!"
It depends on the consent of the people to decide whether kings or consuls or other magistrates are to be established in authority over them, and if there is legitimate cause, the people can change a kingdom into an aristocracy, or an aristocracy into a democracy, and vice versa, as we read was done in Rome. [ De Laicis .]
Gravis ira regum semper=--The anger of kings is always heavy.
Here I and sorrows sit; Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.
How long halt ye between two opinions?
This is an ancient hallow, and ere the kings failed or the Tree withered in the court, a fruit must have been set here. For it is said that, though the fruit of the Tree comes seldom to ripeness, yet the life within may then lie sleeping through many long years, and none can foretell the time in which it will awake.
Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and parliaments.
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver, and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings.
Toil is polish'd man's vocation; / Praises are the meed of skill; / Kings may vaunt their crown and station, / We will vaunt our labour still.
Being nimble and light-footed, his father encouraged him to run in the Olympic race. "Yes," said he, "if there were any kings there to run with me."
The greatness of men of understanding is invisible to kings, to the rich, to conquerors, and to all the great according to the flesh.
The kings of the earth, and all nations shall worship him. Is. lx.
Reges dicuntur multis urgere culullis, / Et torquere mero, quem perspexisse laborent, / An sit amicitia dignus=--Kings are said to press with many a cup, and test with wine the man whom they desire to try whether he is worthy of their friendship.
Grammar, which knows how to control even kings.
Now of what thinks the world? Never of these things, but of dancing, playing the lute, singing, making verses, tilting at the ring, etc., of fighting, making ourselves kings, without thinking what it is to be a king, or what to be a man.
Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest, and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least.--_Thomas Paine._
Jasper fert myrrham, thus Melchior, Balthazar aurum. / H?c quicum secum portet tria nomina regum, / Solvitur a morbo, Domini pietate, caduco=--Jasper brings myrrh, Melchior frankincense, and Balthazar gold. Whoever carries with him the names of these three kings (the three kings of Cologne, the Magi) will, by the grace of God, be exempt from the falling sickness.
Fuge magna; licet sub paupere tecto / Reges et regum vita pr?currere amicos=--Shun grandeur; under a poor roof you may surpass even kings and the friends of kings in your life.
In my mind, he was guilty of no error, he was chargeable with no exaggeration, he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said that all we see about us, kings, lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve good men into a box.
L'amour soumet la terre, assujettit les cieux, / Les rois sont a ses pieds, il gouverne les dieux=--Love rules the earth, subjects the heavens; kings are at his feet; he controls the gods.
Unhappy state of kings! it is well the robe of majesty is gay, or who would put it on?
"Thou who art the greatest of kings, and to whom God has given a power so extended that thou art renowned among all people, art the golden head of the image which thou hast seen.
The most lucrative commerce has ever been that of hope, pleasure, and happiness, the merchandise of authors, priests, and kings.--_Madame Roland._
That [slavery] is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, “You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.” No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle. [Lincoln-Douglas Debate, October 15, 1858, Alton, Illinois.]
The Jews who were called to subdue the nations and their kings were slaves of sin, and the Christians whose calling has been to be servants and subjects, are free children.
If every fool wore a crown, we should all be kings.
Elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman, dignity is proper to noblemen, and majesty to kings.
He made one of Antipater's recommendation a judge; and perceiving afterwards that his hair and beard were coloured, he removed him, saying, "I could not think one that was faithless in his hair could be trusty in his deeds."
"Yet Sion hath dared to say: The Lord hath forsaken and hath forgotten me. Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb, but if she forget, yet will I not forget thee, O Sion. I will bear thee always between my hands, and thy walls shall be ever before me. Thy builders are come, thy destroyers shall go forth of thee. Lift up thy eyes round about, and see all these are gathered together, to come to thee: as I live, saith the Lord, thou shall be clothed with all these as with an ornament, thy deserts, and thy desolate places, and the land of thy destruction shall now be too narrow by reason of the inhabitants, and the children of thy barrenness shall still say in thy ears: the place is too strait for me, make me room to dwell in. And thou shall say in thy heart: Who hath begotten these? I was barren and brought not forth, led away, and captive: and who hath brought up these? I was destitute and alone: and these, where were they? And the Lord shall say: Behold, I will lift up my hand to the Gentiles, and will set up my standard to the people. And they shall bring thy children in their arms, and in their bosoms. And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and queens thy nursing mothers: they shall worship thee with their face toward the earth, and they shall lick up the dust of thy feet. And thou shall know that I am the Lord, for they shall not be confounded that wait for him. Shall the prey be taken from the strong and mighty? But even if the captivity be taken away from the strong: nothing can hinder me to judge those that have judged thee, and thy children I will save. And all flesh shall know, that I am the Lord thy Saviour, and thy Redeemer the mighty One of Jacob.
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, / "An honest man's the noblest work of God."
Opes regum, corda subditorum=--The wealth of kings is in the affections of their subjects. _M._ [Greek: opse theon aleousi myloi, aleousi de lepta]--The mills of the gods grind slow, but they grind small.
He whose sympathy goes lowest is the man from whom kings have the most to fear.
What people call her= (England's) =history is not hers at all; but that of her kings (though the history of them is worth reading), or the tax-gatherers employed by them, which is as if people were to call Mr. Gladstone's history or Mr. Lowe's, yours or mine.
Dreams are but interludes which fancy makes. / When monarch reason sleeps, this mimic wakes; / Compounds a medley of disjointed things, / A mob of cobblers and a court of kings; / Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad; / Both are the reasonable soul run mad.
Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things To low ambition and the pride of kings. Let us (since life can little more supply Than just to look about us, and to die) Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan.
Regum ?quabat opes animis; seraque revertens / Nocte domum, dapibus mensas onerabat inemptis=--He equalled the wealth of kings in contentment of mind; and at night returning home, would load his board with unbought dainties.
The right divine of kings to govern wrong.
Time's glory is to command contending kings, To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light.
Antagoras the poet was boiling a conger, and Antigonus, coming behind him as he was stirring his skillet, said, "Do you think, Antagoras, that Homer boiled congers when he wrote the deeds of Agamemnon?" Antagoras replied, "Do you think, O king, that Agamemnon, when he did such exploits, was a peeping in his army to see who boiled congers?"
Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.
"The time has come", the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes — and ships — and sealing wax — Of cabbages — and Kings — And why the Sea is boiling hot — And whether pigs have wings."
When Darius offered him ten thousand talents, and to divide Asia equally with him, "I would accept it," said Parmenio, "were I Alexander." "And so truly would I," said Alexander, "if I were Parmenio." But he answered Darius that the earth could not bear two suns, nor Asia two kings.
Ipsa quidem virtus sibimet pulcherrima merces (Virtue herself is her own fairest reward).--SILIUS ITALICUS (25?-99): _Punica, lib. xiii. line 663._ The glories of our blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against fate; Death lays his icy hands on kings.
In such green palaces the first kings reign'd, Slept in their shades, and angels entertain'd; With such old counsellors they did advise, And by frequenting sacred groves grew wise.
True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings; Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.
The kings of modern thought are dumb.
There were two brothers called Both and Either; perceiving Either was a good, understanding, busy fellow, and Both a silly fellow and good for little, Philip said, "Either is both, and Both is neither."
1 Kings xvii. The widow to Elijah, who had restored her son. "By this I know that thy words are true."
A still, small voice.
Death lays his icy hand on kings.
Le silence du peuple est la lecon des rois=--The silence of the people is a lesson to kings.
To lapse in fulness / Is sorer than to lie for need; and falsehood / Is worse in kings than beggars.
Nature smiles as sweet, I ween, / To shepherds as to kings.
But war's a game which, were their subjects wise, / Kings would not play at.
Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.
Mercy is above this sceptred sway, / It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, / It is an attribute to God himself; / And earthly power doth then show likest God's / When mercy seasons justice.
To one that promised to give him hardy cocks that would die fighting, "Prithee," said Cleomenes, "give me cocks that will kill fighting."
God has not willed to absolve without the Church. As she has part in the offence he wills that she should have part in the pardon. He associates her with this power as kings their parliaments; but if she binds or looses without God, she is no more the Church, as in the case of parliament. For even if the king have pardoned a man, it is necessary that it should be ratified; but if the parliament ratifies without the king, or refuses to ratify on the order of the king, it is no more the parliament of the king, but a revolutionary body.
When Philip had news brought him of divers and eminent successes in one day, "O Fortune!" said he, "for all these so great kindnesses do me some small mischief."
The kings will arm themselves against him. Ps. ii.
Death, the dry pedant, spares neither the rose nor the thistle, nor does he forget the solitary blade of grass in the distant waste. He destroys thoroughly and unceasingly. Everywhere we may see how he crushes to dust plants and beasts, men and their works. Even the Egyptian pyramids, that would seem to defy him, are trophies of his power,--monuments of decay, graves of primeval kings.--_Heinrich Heine._
The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces.
They are not kings who sit on thrones, but they who know how to govern.
Lycurgus the Laced?monian brought long hair into fashion among his countrymen, saying that it rendered those that were handsome more beautiful, and those that were deformed more terrible. To one that advised him to set up a democracy in Sparta, "Pray," said Lycurgus, "do you first set up a democracy in your own house."
United yet divided, twain at once: So sit two kings of Brentford on one throne.
Warwick, peace, Proud setter up and puller down of kings!
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too... If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And — which is more — you'll be a Man, my son!
Sollicitant alii remis freta c?ca, ruuntque / In ferrum: penetrant aulas, et limina regum=--Some disturb unknown seas with oars, some rush upon the sword; some push their way into courts and the portals of kings.
Pallida mors ?quo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas, / Regumque turres=--Pale Death with impartial foot knocks at the hovels of the poor and the palaces of kings.
God, sir, he gart kings ken that there was a lith in their neck.
We must consider how very little history there is; I mean real, authentic history. That certain kings reigned and certain battles were fought we can depend upon as true; but all the coloring, all the philosophy of history, is conjecture.--_Johnson._