God helps us not; no emperor can. [ Friedrich Schiller ]
Is it an emperor's business to catch flies? [ Proverb ]
Better a living beggar than a buried emperor. [ La Fontaine ]
No emperor has power to dictate to the heart. [ Friedrich Schiller ]
An emperor ought to die at his post (standing). [ Vespasian ]
So work the honey-bees;
Creatures, that by a rule in nature teach
The art of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king and officers of sorts;
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home;
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds;
Which pillage they, with merry march, bring home.
To the tent royal of their emperor;
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold;
The civil citizens kneading up the honey;
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;
The sad-ey'd justice, with his surly hum.
Delivering over to executors pale
The lazy yawning drone. [ William Shakespeare ]
I dreamt my lady came and found me dead.
(Strange dream! that gives a dead man leave to think)
And breath'd such life with kisses in my lips
That I reviv'd, and was an emperor. [ William Shakespeare ]
Scorn to trample upon a worm or to sneak to be an emperor. [ Saadi ]
Sickness will spoil the happiness of an emperor as well as mine. [ Proverb ]
A great man will not trample upon, a worm, nor sneak to an emperor. [ Proverb ]
Nature takes as much pains in the forming of a beggar as an emperor. [ Proverb ]
Nature takes as much pains in the womb for the forming of a beggar as an emperor. [ Proverb ]
An emperor in his nightcap will not meet with half the respect of an emperor with a crown. [ Goldsmith ]
I regard them, as Charles the Emperor did Florence, that they are too pleasant to be looked upon except on holidays. [ Izaak Walton ]
The emperor one day took up a pencil which fell from the hand of Titian, who was then drawing his picture; and upon the compliment which Titian made him on that occasion he said, Titian deserves to be served by Caesar.
[ Dryden ]
Processions, cavalcades, and all that fund of gay frippery, furnished out by tailors, barbers, and tire-women, mechanically influence the mind into veneration; an emperor in his nightcap would not meet with half the respect of an emperor with a crown. [ Goldsmith ]