Monarchs Quotes - Page 2

• Know, Nature's children all divide her care, The fur that warms a monarch warmed a bear.

  Alexander Pope

  Nature, Children, Science

  Alexander Pope, John Wilson Croker (1871). “The Works: Including Several Hundred Unpublished Letters, and Other New Materials”, p.403

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• Tax time approaches, and Americans are as always paying H & R Block billions to help them save some of their wealth from their ravenous government. Pitiful, in a way: it underlines the grim but
  unacknowledged fact that the government is their enemy and they have to hire protection from it. But don't we enjoy 'self-government'? Well, if we have it, I'd hardly say we enjoy it. True, we aren't being taxed by the monarch of Great Britain, but our American-born rulers claim far more of our wealth than the British monarchs ever did.

  Joseph Sobran

  Block, Government, Self

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• Once at a potent leader's voice I stayed; Once I went back when a good monarch prayed; Mortals, howe'er we grieve, howe'er deplore, The flying shadow will return no more.

  Maurice Maeterlinck

  Grieving, Voice, Leader

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• A careless song, with a little nonsense in it now and then, does not mis-become a monarch.

  Horace Walpole

  Song, Doe, Littles

  Horace Walpole, Sir Horace Mann (1833). “Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, to Sir Horace Mann, British Envoy at the Court of Tuscany”, p.304

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• Dreams are but interludes, which fancy makes; When monarch reason sleeps, this mimic wakes.

  John Dryden

  Dream, Sleep, Fancy

  John Dryden (1868). “The Poetical Works of John Dryden”, p.362

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• There is great weight in the modern times of being monarch, the scrutiny and access is much more than in times gone by.

  George VI

  Gone, Weight, Modern

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• The oak, when living, monarch of the wood; The English oak, which, dead, commands the flood.

  Charles Churchill

  Woods, Flood, Command

  Charles Churchill, Robert Southey (1854). “The Poetical Works of Charles Churchill: With Copious Notes and a Life of the Author”, p.90

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• The reason territorial monarchs failed time after time against maritime powers was not that absolutist, non-consensual governments were incapable of building great fleets in peace - quite the reverse - but that they were unable to fund them in the crises of war. Mainly this was because they were forced to divert resources from the fleet to their armies, to fight territorial rivals frequently financed by their maritime enemy from the profits of sea trade.

  Peter Padfield

  War, Army, Fighting

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• In the 20th century, the position of the monarch as head of the Church of England was given a meaning which it never had before. You took the fact that the monarch was head of the Church of England to mean that the British monarchy was itself a religious or moral institution and the monarchy became a symbol of national public morality.

  David Starkey

  Religious, Mean, Church

  "What do the cards hold for British royalty?". www.cnn.com. August 19, 1996.

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• We don't know how Cleopatra spent her days, but we do know how other Hellenistic monarchs spent their days. There has been a great amount of scholarship in the last 30 years about education in the Hellenistic world and women in the Hellenistic world. We now know how an upper-class woman was educated in her day.

  Stacy Schiff

  Years, Class, World

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• The fundamental difference between Islamic government, on the one hand, and constitutional monarchy and republics, on the other, is this: whereas the representatives of the people or the monarch in such regimes engage in legislation, in Islam the legislative power and competence to establish laws belong exclusively to God Almighty.

  Ruhollah Khomeini

  Islamic, Differences, Government

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• Clemency is the noblest trait which can reveal a true monarch to the world.

  Pierre Corneille

  World, Clemency, Traits

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• Palaeontology is the Aladdin's lamp of the most deserted and lifeless regions of the earth; it touches the rocks and there spring forth in orderly succession the monarchs of the past and the ancient river streams and savannahs wherein they flourished. The rocks usually hide their story in the most difficult and inaccessible places.

  Roy Chapman Andrews

  Spring, Science, Past

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• A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs or monarchs.

  Epicurus

  Life, Easy, Possession

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• Here in Barcelona, it's the architects who built the buildings that made the city iconic who are the objects of admiration - not a bunch of half-witted monarchs.

  Julie Burchill

  Cities, Half, Barcelona

  "Patriotism is for reactionaries ... nationalism is the way forward". www.theguardian.com. September 8, 2012.

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• O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

  William Shakespeare

  Fire, Heaven, Kingdoms

  'Henry V' (1599) chorus, l. 1

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• Even monarchs have need of authors, and fear their pens more than ugly women the painter's pencil.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Writing, Needs, Ugly

  Baltasar Gracian (2006). “The Art of Worldly Wisdom”, p.113, Shambhala Publications

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• A criminal remains a criminal whether he uses a convict's suit or a monarch's crown.

  Victor Hugo

  Fear, Criminals, Use

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• I still try to keep my eyes open. I'm always on the lookout for antlion traps in sandy soil, monarch pupae near milkweed, skipper larvae in locust leaves. These things are utterly common, and I've not seen one

  Annie Dillard

  Eye, Trying, Soil

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.19, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• Authority is a solvent of humanity: look at any husband, any father of a family,and note the absorption of the person by the persona, the individual by the role. Then multiply the family, and the authority, by some hundreds and see the effect upon a sea-captain, to say nothing of an absolute monarch.Surely man in general is born to be oppressed or solitary, if he is to be fully human; unless it so happens that he is immune to the poison.

  Patrick O'Brian

  Husband, Father, Men

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• Without water we are nothing", the traveler thought. "Even an emperor, denied water, would swiftly turn to dust. Water is the real monarch and we are all its slaves.

  Salman Rushdie

  Real, Dust, Water

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• My English teacher has no face. She has uncombed stringy hair that droops on her shoulders. The hair is black from her part to her ears and then neon orange to the frizzy ends. I can't decide if she had pissed off her hairdresser or is morphing into a monarch butterfly. I call her Hairwoman.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Teacher, Butterfly, Hair

  Laurie Halse Anderson (2011). “Speak”, p.6, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

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• The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But 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.

  William Shakespeare

  Kings, Rain, Heart

  'The Merchant of Venice' (1596-8) act 4, sc. 1, l. [182]

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• The press is not only free, it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjoy. It was not granted by monarchs, it was not gained for us by aristocracies; but it sprang from the people, and, with an immortal instinct, it has always worked for the people.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Powerful, Men, People

  Benjamin Disraeli's speech at the Printing Trade Festival, 1845.

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• It's like those eerie stories nurses tell,
  Of how some actor on a stage played Death,
  With pasteboard crown, sham orb and tinselled dart,
  And called himself the monarch of the world;
  Then, going in the tire-room afterward,
  Because the play was done, to shift himself,
  Got touched upon the sleeve familiarly,
  The moment he had shut the closet door,
  By Death himself. Thus God might touch a Pope
  At unawares, ask what his baubles mean,
  And whose part he presumed to play just now.
  Best be yourself, imperial, plain and true!

  Robert Browning

  Death, Being Yourself, Mean

  Robert Browning (2013). “MEN AND WOMEN Songs of love and life”, p.93, Lulu.com

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