Reign Quotes - Page 9

• But we remember that it was just precisely in the reign of Richard II that the Peasants' War, following upon the changes wrought by the visitations of the Great Plague, virtually destroyed serfdom as a personal status.

  Edward Jenks

  War, Remember, Peasants

  Edward Jenks (1922). “A Short History of English Law: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Year 1919”

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• He that shall peruse the political pamphlets of any past reign will wonder why they were so eagerly read, or so loudly praised.

  Samuel Johnson

  Past, Political, Politics

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1820). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: A New Edition in Twelve Volumes, to which is Prefixed, an Essay on His Life and Genius, by Arthur Murphy, Esq. Containing Rambler vol. 1-3”, p.224

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• Fickle Fortune reigns, and, undiscerning, scatters crowns and chains.

  Alexander Pope

  Fickle, Crowns, Fortune

  Alexander Pope (1853). “The poetical works of Alexander Pope”

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• The two Antonines (for it is of them that we are now speaking) governed the Roman world forty-two years, with the same invariable spirit of wisdom and virtue. ... Their united reigns are possibly the only period of history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government.

  Edward Gibbon

  Government, Years, Two

  Edward Gibbon (2009). “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Edited and Abridged): Abridged Edition”, p.52, Modern Library

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• How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute, And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets Where no crude surfeit reigns

  John Milton

  Music, Sweet, Philosophy

  John Milton, Thomas Warton (1799). “Comus,: A Mask: Presented at Ludlow Castle 1634, Before the Earl of Bridgewater, Then President of Wales”, p.67

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• A story, in which native humour reigns, Is often useful, always entertains; A graver fact, enlisted on your side, May furnish illustration, well applied; But sedentary weavers of long tales Give me the fidgets, and my patience fails.

  William Cowper

  Illustration, Your Side, Long

  William Cowper (1855). “The complete poetical works of William Cowper, with life and critical notice of his writings”, p.86

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• In short, virtue cannot live where envy reigns, nor liberality subsist with niggardliness.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Envy, Virtue, Liberality

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1749). “The Life and Exploits of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha. Translated from the Original Spanish of Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra. By Charles Jarvis Esq; ...”, p.441

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• The reign of terror to which France submitted has been more justly termed "the reign of cowardice." One knows not which most to execrate,--the nation that could submit to suffer such atrocities, or that low and bloodthirsty demagogue that could inflict them. France, in succumbing to such a wretch as Robespierre, exhibited, not her patience, but her pusillanimity.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Suffering, Atrocities, France

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.70

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• Every woman who has had experience with sexual violence of any kind has not just pain, and not just hurt, but has knowledge. Knowledge of male supremacy. Knowledge of what it is. Knowledge of what it feels like. And can begin to think strategically about how to stop it. We are living under a reign of terror. Now what I want to say is that I want us to stop accepting that that's normal. And the only way that we can stop accepting that that's normal is if we refuse to have amnesia everyday of our lives.

  Andrea Dworkin

  Hurt, Pain, Thinking

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• The whole of organic nature on our planet exists only by a relentless war of all against all. ... The raging war of interests in human society is only a feeble picture of an unceasing and terrible war of existence which reigns throughout the whole of the living world.

  Ernst Haeckel

  War, World, Rage

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• Still lie the sheltering snows, undimmed and white;
  And reigns the winter's pregnant silence still;
  No sign of spring, save that the catkins fill,
  And willow stems grow daily red and bright.
  These are days when ancients held a rite
  Of expiation for the old year's ill,
  And prayer to purify the new year's will.

  Helen Hunt Jackson

  New Year, Prayer, Lying

  Helen Hunt Jackson (1891). “A Calendar of Sonnets”, p.4, Library of Alexandria

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• He brings to naught, destroys and rejects all that is not His own work; how He draws everything to Himself and absorbs it, that at last He may live and work in us and through us and reign alone as king. Happy the soul who refuses nothing to love, but places everything at His disposal, for only thus may all our works be done more and more in God.

  Gerhard Tersteegen

  Kings, Temptation, Soul

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• Creating simplicity often makes the heart leap; order has been restored, the crooked made straight. But order is understanding that things cannot be made simple, that complexity reigns and must be accepted.

  Marina Warner

  Heart, Simple, Creating

  Marina Warner (2013). “Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism”, p.249, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Obsolescence and death, the reign of the archaic, the abandoned, and the corny: Really, if you saw Windows 3.0 on the sidewalk outside the building, would you bend over and pick it up?!?

  Bruce Sterling

  Saws, Corny, Window

  "The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole". Talk at Long Now Foundation, 2004.

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• The slightest force, when it is applied to assist and guide the natural descent of its object, operates with irresistible weight; and Jovian had the good fortune to embrace the religious opinions which were supported by the spirit of the times and the zeal and numbers of the most powerful sect. Under his reign, Christianity obtained an easy and lasting victory; and, as soon as the smile of royal patronage was withdrawn, the genius of Paganism, which had been fondly raised and cherished by the arts of Julian, sunk irrecoverably in the dust.

  Edward Gibbon

  Religious, Art, Powerful

  Edward Gibbon (2016). “THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (All 6 Volumes): From the Height of the Roman Empire, the Age of Trajan and the Antonines - to the Fall of Byzantium; Including a Review of the Crusades, and the State of Rome during the Middle Ages”, p.1136, e-artnow

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• The most successful of the Tartar princes assumed the military command, to which he was entitled by the superiority either of merit or of power. He was raised to the throne by the acclamations of his equals; and the title of Khan expresses, in the language of the North of Asia, the full extent of the regal dignity. The right of hereditary succession was long confined to the blood of the founder of the monarchy; and at this moment all the Khans, who reign from Crimea to the wall of China, are the lineal descendants of the renowned Zingis.

  Edward Gibbon

  Wall, Military, Successful

  Edward Gibbon (2015). “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire V2: the History Focus”, p.354, 谷月社

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• But the desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burthens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord; nor can it reasonably be presumed that the restoration of British freedom was exempt from tumult and faction. The pre-eminence of birth and fortune must have been frequently violated by bold and popular citizens; and the haughty nobles, who complained that they were become the subjects of their own servants, would sometimes regret the reign of an arbitrary monarch.

  Edward Gibbon

  Regret, Escaping, History

  Edward Gibbon (1840). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.100

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• ...it was a huge creature, luminous, ghastly, and spectral. I have cross-examined these men, one of them a hard-headed countryman, one a farrier, and one a moorland farmer, who all tell the same story of this dreadful apparition, exactly corresponding to the hell-hound of the legend. I assure you that there is a reign of terror in the district, and that it is a hardy man who will cross the moor at night.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Halloween, Night, Men

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• The division of the Roman world between the sons of Theodosius marks the final establishment of the empire of the East, which, from the reign of Arcadius to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, subsisted one thousand and fifty-eight years in a state of premature and perpetual decay.

  Edward Gibbon

  Son, Eight, Years

  Edward Gibbon (2000). “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II: A.D. 395 to A.D. 1185 (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.304, Modern Library

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• Fear is cruel and mean. The political reigns of terror have been reigns of madness and malignity,--a total perversion of opinion;society is upside down, and its best men are thought too bad to live.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fear, Mean, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.130, Harvard University Press

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• politicians ... turn patriotism into shopkeeping and their own interest - men who care far more for who governs us than for how we are governed.. And what will be the end of such ways? I will tell you. We shall have a Democracy that will be the reign of those who know the least and talk the loudest.

  Amelia Barr

  Men, Democracy, Way

  Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (1900). “The Maid of Maiden Lane: A Sequel to "The Bow of Orange Ribbon."”

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• Ignorance has been well represented under the similitude of a dungeon, where, though it is full of life, yet darkness and silence reign. But in society the bars and locks have been broken; the dungeon itself is demolished; the prisoners are out; they are in the midst of us. We have no security but to teach and renovate them.

  Horace Mann

  Ignorance, Broken, Silence

  Horace Mann (1867). “Thoughts”, p.118

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• In the whole vast dome of living nature there reigns an open violence, a kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom: as soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life.

  Joseph de Maistre

  Arms, Kingdoms, Violence

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• ...the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer. [...] Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists.

  Pope Pius X

  Country, Powerful, True Friend

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• He who makes the quickest, coolest prototypes reigns!

  Tom Peters

  Work, Prototype

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