quotations about kings
Kings are the slaves of history.
LEO TOLSTOY
War and Peace
Kings are not born: they are made by universal hallucination.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Maxims for Revolutionists
Power makes you a monarch, and all the fancy robes in the world won't do the job without it.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Narcissus in Chains
Because a man plays a king superbly well does not mean that he would make a good king.
LOUIS L'AMOUR
Comstock Lode
Whoever controls the king, controls the kingdom.
HOLLY BLACK
The Cruel Prince
Kings are like stars -- they rise and set, they have
The worship of the world, but no repose.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Hellas
No kingdom can endure two kings.
AGESILAUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
By justice a king gives a country stability.
PROVERBS 29:4
Poor man wanna be rich;
Rich man wanna be king.
And a king ain't satisfied
Till he rules everything.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"Badlands", Darkness on the Edge of Town
Let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been depos'd, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd,
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Richard II
All kings is mostly rapscallions.
MARK TWAIN
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
A man's a man,
But when you see a king, you see the work
Of many thousand men.
GEORGE ELIOT
Spanish Gypsy
It is better to be without a king than [to have] a bad one.
CHANAKYA
Vridda-Chanakya
It is the King's office to protect and settle the true interpretation of the Law of God within his Dominions.
JAMES I
speech in Star Chamber, 1616
Never does liberty appear in a more gracious form than under a pious king.
CLAUDIANUS
De Laudibus Stilichonis
What are kings, when regiment is gone,
But perfect shadows in a sunshine day?
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Edward the Second
The rule
Of the many is not well. One must be chief
In war and one the king.
HOMER
The Iliad
Fear God. Honour the King.
BIBLE
I Peter 2:17
Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
It Can't Happen Here
A king may be a tool, a thing of straw; but if he serves to frighten our enemies, and secure our property, it is well enough: a scarecrow is a thing of straw, but it protects the corn.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"