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- What are kings, when regiment is gone,
- But perfect shadows in a sunshine day?
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Edward the Second
The greatest slave in a kingdom is generally the king of it.
FULKE GREVILLE, Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
I was much an enemy to monarchies before I came to Europe. I am ten thousand times more so, since I have seen what they are. There is scarcely an evil known in these countries, which may not be traced to their king, as its source, nor a good, which is not derived from the small fibres of republicanism existing among them.
THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to General Washington, May 2, 1788
All kings is mostly rapscallions.
MARK TWAIN, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
What the devil's a king but a man, or a queen but a woman?
MAXWELL ANDERSON, Elizabeth the Queen
All kings are foes of all the men they rule.
This principle is old, but true as fate, Kings may love treason, but the traitor hate.
THOMAS DEKKER, The Honest Whore
War's a game, which, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at.
Kings ought never to be seen upon the stage. In the abstract, they are very disagreeable characters: it is only while living that they are 'the best of kings'. It is their power, their splendour, it is the apprehension of the personal consequences of their favour or their hatred that dazzles the imagination and suspends the judgement of their favourites or their vassals; but death cancels the bond of allegiance and of interest; and seen AS THEY WERE, their power and their pretensions look monstrous and ridiculous.
WILLIAM HAZLITT, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays
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
If the king is pious, the subjects become so; but if the king is vicious, the subjects become the same. If he be indifferent to both (virtue and vice), then they too bear the same character. In short, as is the king so are his subjects.
CHANAKYA, Vridda-Chanakya
No race of kings has ever presented above one man of common sense in twenty generations.
THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to Benjamin Hawkins, Aug. 4, 1787
By justice a king gives a country stability.
- To know nor faith, nor love, nor law, to be
- Omnipotent but friendless, is to reign.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, Prometheus Unbound
Once a king ... it was impossible, without risk of life, to sink to a private station.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck
It is better to be without a king than [to have] a bad one.
CHANAKYA, Vridda-Chanakya
- Kings are like stars — they rise and set, they have
- The worship of the world, but no repose.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, Hellas
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