Emperor Quotes - Page 4

• Let your throat-song
  be clear and strong enough to make an emperor fall full-length
  suppliant, at the door.

  Rumi

  Song, Strong, Fall

  Rumi (2015). “Selected Poems”, p.304, Penguin UK

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• In 302, the Roman emperor Diocletian commanded "there should be cheapness," declaring, "Unprincipled greed appears wherever our armies ... march. ... Our law shall fix a measure and a limit to this greed." The predictable result of Diocletian's food price controls were black markets, hunger and food confiscation by his soldiers. Despite the disastrous history of price controls, politicians never manage to resist tampering with prices -- that's not a flattering observation of their learning abilities.

  Walter E. Williams

  Army, Law, Greed

  "Economics for the Citizen (Part 9)". capitalismmagazine.com. January 20, 2005.

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• Both in verse and in prose [Karl] Shapiro loves, partly out of indignation and partly out of sheer mischievousness, to tell the naked truths or half-truths or quarter-truths that will make anybody's hair stand on end; he is always crying: "But he hasn't any clothes on!" about an emperor who is half the time surprisingly well-dressed.

  Randall Jarrell

  Clothes, Hair, Naked

  "The Third Book of Criticism". Book by Randall Jarrell, "Fifty Years of American Poetry", p. 331, 1969.

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• The Emperor Constantine, who lifted Christianity into power, murdered his wife Fausta, and his eldest son Crispus, the same year that he convened the Council of Nice to decide whether Jesus Christ was a man or the Son of God. The council decided that Christ was consubstantial with the father. This was in the year 325. We are thus indebted to a wife-murderer for settling the vexed question of the divinity of the Savior.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Jesus, Father, Nice

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.776, Library of Alexandria

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• At least when the Emperor Justinian, a sky-god man, decided to outlaw sodomy, he had to come up with a good practical reason, which he did. It is well known, Justinian declared, that buggery is a principal cause of earthquakes, and so must be prohibited. But our sky-godders, always eager to hate, still quote Leviticus, as if that looney text had anything useful to say about anything except, perhaps, the inadvisability of eating shellfish in the Jerusalem area.

  Gore Vidal

  Hate, Men, Sky

  "America First? America Last? America at Last?". Lowell Lecture, Harvard University, April 20, 1992.

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• "We, Seth, Emperor of Azania, Chief of Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University, being in this the twenty-fourth year of our life, summoned by the wisdom of Almighty God and the unanimous voice of our people to the throne of our ancestors, do hereby proclaim..." Seth paused in his dictation and gazed out across the harbour where in the fresh breeze of early morning the last dhow was setting sail for the open sea. "Rats," he said; "stinking curs. They are all running away."

  Evelyn Waugh

  Running, Art, Morning

  "Black Mischief". Book by Evelyn Waugh, 1932.

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• Englands genius filled all measureOf heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,Gave to the mind its emperor,And life was larger than before:Nor sequent centuries could hitOrbit and sum of Shakespeares wit. The men who lived with him becamePoets, for the air was fame.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heart, Men, Air

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2007). “Poems”, p.228, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The enemies of Christ ... could not bear his independence; his "Give the emperor that which is the emperor's" showed a contempt for the affairs of state and its politics for the moral order that their self-respect would not let them tolerate.

  John Carroll

  Self, Order, Giving

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• In Rome, the emperor sat in a special part of the Colosseum called the Caesarian Section.

  George Carlin

  Rome, Special, Coliseum

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• You sell your happiness for peanuts! You sell your smile for pennies! I tell you, it's not worth it. The entire world is not worth your smile. Even if you are made the king or the emperor of the world, it's not worth giving away your smile.

  Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

  Kings, Giving, Your Smile

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• Peitaho Heavy rains fall on Yuyen, the northland kingdom of swallows. White pages of rain envelop the sky, and fishing boats off the Island of the Emperor Chin disappear on the ocean. Which way have they gone? More than a thousand years ago the mighty emperor Tsao Tsao cracked his whip and drove his army against the Tartars. He left us a poem: "Let us move east to the Stone Mountains." Today we still shiver in the autumn gale, in desolate winds, yet another man is in the world.

  Mao Zedong

  Rain, Ocean, Moving

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• Not a single bird makes its first leap from a tree without faith, and not a single animal in the jungle begins its day without faith. Faith is the flame that eliminates fear, and faith is the emperor of dreams.

  Suzy Kassem

  Dream, Animal, Flames

  "Rise Up and Salute the Sun". Book by Suzy Kassem, 2010.

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• To be spiritual means to be an emperor within yourself. This is the only way to be.

  Jaggi Vasudev

  Spiritual, Yoga, Mean

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• An emperor knows how to govern when poets are free to make verses, people to act plays, historians to tell the truth, ministers to give advice, the poor to grumble at taxes, students to learn lessons aloud, workmen to praise their skill and seek work, people to speak of anything, and old men to find fault with everything.

  Will Durant

  Men, Play, Skills

  Will Durant, Ariel Durant (1954). “The story of civilization”

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• Everything Mengistu has done since 1977 has been to place himself in a position of uncontestable power. Neither Haile Selassie nor any of the previous emperors had this insatiable thirst for power.

  Mengistu Haile Mariam

  Done, Thirst For Power, Position

  "Red Tears: War, Famine and Revolution in Ethiopia". Book by Dawit Wolde Giorgis, 1989.

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• The first (barbers) that entered Italy came out of Sicily and it was in the 454 yeare after the foundation of Rome. Brought in they were by P. Ticinius Mena as Verra doth report for before that time they never cut their hair. The first that was shaven every day was Scipio Africanus, and after cometh Augustus the Emperor who evermore used the razor.

  Pliny the Elder

  Cutting, Hair, Rome

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 57, Natural History, Book VII, Chapter LIX. Holland's translation, 1922.

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• Content is not just king, it is the emperor of all things electronic.

  Rupert Murdoch

  Kings, All Things

  "Good news for News Corp". "The World TODAY" with Craig McMurtrie, www.abc.net.au. February 3, 2010.

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• "Some would call you a saint, some a chandala; some a lunatic, others a demon. Go on then straight to thy work without heeding either" - thus saith one of our great Sannyasins, an old emperor of India, King Bhartrihari, who joined the order in old times.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Kings, Order, India

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “Swami Vivekananda on Himself”, p.152, Advaita Ashrama

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• Gout, unlike any other disease, kills more rich men than poor, more wise men than simple. Great kings, emperors, generals, admirals and philosophers have all died of gout.

  Thomas Sydenham

  Wise, Kings, Simple

  Thomas Sydenham, Robert Gordon Latham (1850). “The works of Thomas Sydenham, M.D.”, p.129

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• It was man who ended the Cold War in case you didn't notice. It wasn't weaponry, or technology, or armies or campaigns. It was just man. Not even Western man either, as it happened, but our sworn enemy in the East, who went into the streets, faced the bullets and the batons and said: we've had enough. It was their emperor, not ours, who had the nerve to mount the rostrum and declare he had no clothes. And the ideologies trailed after these impossible events like condemned prisoners, as ideologies do when they've had their day.

  John le Carre

  War, Army, Technology

  "The Secret Pilgrim". Book by John le Carré, www.huffingtonpost.com. 1990.

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• Constantine, the Emperor, saw something in the religion of Christ's people which awakened his interest, and now we see him uniting religion to the state and marching up the marble steps of the Emperor's palace, with the church robed in purple. Thus and there was begun the most baneful misalliance that ever fettered and cursed a suffering world... When ... Constantine crowned the union of church and state, the church was stamped with the spirit of the Caesars.

  George W Truett

  Purple, People, Suffering

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• Any man who criticizes my suicide and passes judgment on me with an expression of superiority, declaring (without offering the least help) that I should have gone on living my full complement of days, is assuredly a prodigy among men quite capable of tranquilly urging the Emperor to open a fruit shop.

  Osamu Dazai

  Suicide, Men, Offering

  Osamu Dazai (1968). “The Setting Sun”, p.159, New Directions Publishing

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• We want to be masters of our own destiny. We need no Gods or Emperors. We do not believe in the existence of any saviour. We want to be masters of the world and not instruments used by autocrats to carry out their wild ambitions. We want a modern lifestyle and democracy for the people. Freedom and happiness are our sole objectives in accomplishing modernisation.

  Wei Jingsheng

  Believe, Ambition, Destiny

  "Ai Weiwei: the dissident artist" by Hari Kunzru, www.theguardian.com. May 27, 2011.

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• Saying Good-bye to the God of Disease (2) Thousands of willow branches in a spring wind. Six hundred million of China, land of the gods, and exemplary like the emperors Shun and Yao. A scarlet rain of peach blossoms turned into waves and emerald mountains into bridges. Summits touch the sky. We dig with silver shovels and iron arms shake the earth and the Three Rivers. God of plagues, where are you going? We burn paper boats and bright candles to light his way to heaven.

  Mao Zedong

  Spring, Rain, Land

  Zedong Mao (2008). “The Poems of Mao Zedong”, p.91, Univ of California Press

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• We live in a very special time right now. At no other time in history has there been such mass disillusionment in terms of reliance on governing functions. Most people don’t want to come to terms with that. It’s been proven over and over again that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes, but most people don’t like to look at naked emperors. In the process of turning around to avert their eyes, they saw the discotheques and a few other things and latched onto them.

  Frank Zappa

  Eye, Clothes, People

  Oui interview, 1979.

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