A sceptre is one thing, a ladle another. [ Proverb ]

Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden sceptre over a slumbering world.
Silence, how dead! and darkness, how profound!
Nor eye, nor listening ear, an object finds;
Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the general pulse
Of life stood still, and nature made a pause;
An awful pause! prophetic of her end. [ Young ]

Learning in the hand of some is a sceptre, in that of others a fool's bauble. [ Proverb ]

He on whom Heaven bestows a sceptre knows not the weight of it till he bears it. [ Corneille ]

It is modesty that places in the feeble hand of beauty the sceptre that commands power. [ Helvetius ]

Venerable to me is the hard hand, - crooked, coarse, - wherein, notwithstanding, lies a cunning virtue, indispensably royal as of the sceptre of the planet. [ Carlyle ]

If all fools had baubles* we should want fuel. (*The fool or jester carried in his hand a wooden sceptre called a bauble. It was a short stick ornamented at the end with the figure of a fool's head, or with that of a puppet or doll. Jesters were still retained in Herbert's day.) [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Heroes have gone out; quacks have come in; the reign of quacks has not ended with the nineteenth century. The sceptre is held with a firmer grasp; the empire has a wider boundary. We are all the slaves of quackery in one shape or another. Indeed, one portion of our being is always playing the successful quack to the other. [ Carlyle ]