Ill kings make many good laws. [ Proverb ]
Kings have no power over souls. [ Proverb ]
Death lays his icy hand on kings. [ Shirley ]
Kings have no such couch as thine,
As the green that folds thy grave. [ Tennyson ]
The anger of kings is always heavy. [ Seneca ]
Poets are far rarer birds than kings. [ Ben Jonson ]
Kings alone are no more than single men. [ Proverb ]
The right divine of kings to govern wrong. [ Pope ]
Europe's eye is fixed on mighty things,
The fall of empires and the fate of kings. [ Burns ]
Our dearest hopes in pangs are born,
The kingliest Kings are crown'd with thorn. [ Gerald Massey, The Kingliest Kings ]
Know when to speak, for many times it brings
Danger to give the best advice to kings. [ Herrick ]
My, crown is in my heart, not on my head;
Not deck'd with diamonds and Indian stones,
Nor to be seen : my crown is call'd content;
A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy. [ Shakespeare ]
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie;
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. [ Milton ]
Others import yet nobler art from France,
Teach kings to fiddle, and make senates dance. [ Pope ]
Since all the riches of this world
May be gifts from the devil and earthly kings.
I should suspect that I worshipped the devil
If I thanked my God for worldly things. [ Wm. Blake ]
Trade hardly deems the busy day begun,
Till his keen eye along the sheet has run;
The blooming daughter throws her needle by.
And reads her schoolmate's marriage with a sigh;
While the grave mother puts her glasses on.
And gives a tear to some old crony gone.
The preacher, too, his Sunday theme lays down,
To know what last new folly fills the town;
Lively or sad, life's meanest, mightiest things.
The fate of fighting cocks, or fighting kings. [ Sprague ]
That place that does contain
My books, the best companions, is to me
A glorious court, where hourly I converse
With the old sages and philosophers;
And sometimes, for variety, I confer
With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels;
Calling their victories, if unjustly got,
Unto a strict account, and, in my fancy,
Deface their ill-placed statues. [ Beaumont and Fletcher ]
Can pocket states, or fetch or carry kings. (Gold) [ Pope ]
There have been fewer friends on earth than kings. [ Cowley ]
To know how to dissemble is the knowledge of kings. [ Richelieu ]
Good kings never make war but for the sake of peace. [ Proverb ]
Not kings alone - the people, too, have their flatterers. [ Mirabeau ]
As honest a man as any in the cards, when the kings are out. [ Proverb ]
Every ass thinks himself worthy to stand with the kings horses. [ Proverb ]
Here I and sorrows sit: Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it. [ William Shakespeare ]
Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings. [ Bible ]
War is a game which, were their subjects wise, kings should not play at. [ William Cowper ]
The people once belonged to the kings; now the kings belong to the people. [ Heine ]
Grammar knows how to lord it over kings, and with high hand make them obey. [ Molière ]
Kings and mightiest potentates must die, For that's the end of human misery. [ William Shakespeare ]
The acclaim of a happy people is the only eloquence which ought to speak in the behalf of kings.
Wise kings have generally wise councillors, as he must be a wise man himself who is capable of distinguishing one. [ Diogenes ]
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver, and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings. [ Burke ]
Avoid greatness; in a cottage there may be found more real happiness than kings or their favorites enjoy in palaces. [ Horace ]
The people have the right to murmur, but they have also the right to be violent, and their silence is the lesson of kings. [ Jean de Beauvais ]
Kings and their subjects, masters and slaves, find a common level in two places - at the foot of the cross, and in the grave. [ Colton ]
How long a time lies in one little word! Four lagging winters and four wanton springs End in a word: such is the breath of kings. [ William Shakespeare ]
Wise were the kings who never chose a friend till with full cups they had unmasked his soul, and seen the bottom of his deepest thoughts. [ Horace ]
The most lucrative commerce has ever been that of hope, pleasure, and happiness: it is the commerce of authors, women, priests, and kings. [ Mme. Roland ]
There is not one of us that would not be worse than kings, if so continually corrupted as they are with a sort of vermin called flatterers. [ Montaigne ]
Time, whose millioned accidents creep in betwixt vows, and change decrees of kings, tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharpest intents, divert strong minds to the course of altering things. [ William Shakespeare ]
Fame confers a rank above that of gentleman and of kings. As soon as she issues her patent of nobility, it matters not a straw whether the recipient be the son of a Bourbon or of it tallow-chandler. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]
All the fairy tales of Aladdin, or the invisible Gyges, or the talisman that opens kings palaces, or the enchanted halls underground or in the sea, are only fictions to* indicate the one miracle of intellectual enlargement. [ Emerson ]
There is nothing like youth. The middle aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in Life's lumber-room. But youth is the Lord of Life. Youth has a kingdom waiting for it. Every one is born a king, and most people die in exile, like most kings. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
The invention of printing added a new element of power to the race. From that hour, in a most especial sense, the brain and not the arm, the thinker and not the soldier, books and not kings, were to rule the world; and weapons, forged in the mind, keen-edged and brighter than the sunbeam, were to supplant the sword and the battle-axe. [ Whipple ]
We must have kings, we must have nobles; nature is always providing such in every society; only let us have the real instead of the titular. In every society some are born to rule, and some to advise. The chief is the chief all the world over, only not his cap and plume. It is only this dislike of the pretender which makes men sometimes unjust to the true and finished man. [ Emerson ]
What a lesson, indeed, is all history and all life to the folly and fruitlessness of pride! The Egyptian kings had their embalmed bodies preserved in massive pyramids, to obtain an earthly immortality. In the seventeenth century they were sold as quack medicines, and now they are burnt for fuel! The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise. [ Whipple ]
When I look upon the tombs of the great, every motion of envy dies; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire forsake me: when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I reflect how vain it is to grieve for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying beside those who deposed them, when I behold rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men who divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the frivolous competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. [ Addison ]