Kings Quotes

What infinite heart's-easeMust kings neglect, that private men enjoy!And what have kings, that privates have not too,Save ceremony, save general ceremony?And what art thou, thou idle ceremony?What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st moreOf mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?What are thy rents? what are thy comings in?O ceremony, show me but thy worth!What is thy soul of adoration?Art thou aught else but place, degree and form,Creating awe and fear in other men?Wherein thou art less happy being fear'dThan they in fearing.What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness,And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!Think'st thou the fiery fever will go outWith titles blown from adulation?Will it give place to flexure and low bending?Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee,Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream,That play'st so subtly with a king's repose;I am a king that find thee, and I know'Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,The farced title running 'fore the king,The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pompThat beats upon the high shore of this world,No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,Not all these, laid in bed majestical,Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,Who with a body fill'd and vacant mindGets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread;Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,But, like a lackey, from the rise to setSweats in the eye of Phoebus and all nightSleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn,Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,And follows so the ever-running year,With profitable labour, to his grave:And, but for ceremony, such a wretch,Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king.The slave, a member of the country's peace,Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wotsWhat watch the king keeps to maintain the peace,Whose hours the peasant best advantages.

William Shakespeare

I am every day more convinced that we women, if we are to be good women, feminine and amiable and domestic, are not fitted to reign; at least it is they that drive themselves to the work which it entails.

Queen Victoria

A king should die on his feet.

Louis XVIII

The metaphor of the king as the shepherd of his people goes back to ancient Egypt. Perhaps the use of this particular convention is due to the fact that, being stupid, affectionate, gregarious, and easily stampeded, the societies formed by sheep are most like human ones.

Northrop Frye

Majesty and love do not consort well together, nor do they dwell in the same place.

Ovid

If you shoot at a king you must kill him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Call me Diana, not Princess Diana.

Princess of Wales Diana

Being a princess isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Princess of Wales Diana

I'd like to be queen of people's hearts.

Princess of Wales Diana

This light of history is pitiless; it has a strange and divine quality that, luminous as it is, and precisely because it is luminous, often casts a shadow just where we saw a radiance; out of the same man it makes two different phantoms, and the one attacks and punishes the other, the darkness of the despot struggles with the splendor of the captain. Hence a truer measure in the final judgment of the nations. Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.

Victor Hugo

The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth: for kings are not only God's Lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called Gods.

King James I

Kings fight for empires, madmen for applause.

John Dryden

All the time I feel I must justify my existence.

Prince Of Wales Charles

Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.

George Bernard Shaw

Princes give me sufficiently if they take nothing from me, and do me much good if they do me no hurt; it is all I require of them.

Michel de Montaigne

If God calls you to be a missionary, don't stoop to be a king.

Jordan Grooms

Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination.

George Bernard Shaw

Once you touch the trappings of monarchy, like opening an Egyptian tomb, the inside is liable to crumble.

Anthony Sampson

Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.

Benjamin Disraeli

Divine right of kings means the divine right of anyone who can get uppermost.

Herbert Spencer