King Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

To use a telling phrase of the Reverend Martin Luther King, we can say that we have defaulted on a promissory note and now is the time to honor it.

No might nor greatness in mortality Can censure 'scape; back- wounding calumny The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?

William Shakespeare

Los Padres have everything and the people have nothing; 'tis the masterpiece of reason and justice. For my part, I know nothing so divine as Los Padres who make war on Kings of Spain and Portugal and in Europe act as their confessors; who here kill Spaniards and at Madrid send them to Heaven.

Tis an old saying, the Devil lurks behind the cross. All is not gold that glitters. From the tail of the plough, Bamba was made King of Spain; and from his silks and riches was Rodrigo cast to be devoured by the snakes.

Miguel de Cervantes

Do not imagine that it is less an accident by which you find yourself master of the wealth which you possess, than that by which this man found himself king.

Every sane man recognises that unlimited liberty is anarchy, or rather is nonentity. The civic idea of liberty is to give the citizen a province of liberty; a limitation within which a citizen is a king.

G. K. Chesterton

Your entire universe will not be enough to make me guilty. You are the king of the Gods, Jupiter, the king of the stones and of the stars, the king of the waves of the sea. But you are not the king of men.

Jean-Paul Sartre

What must the king do now? Must he submit?
The king shall do it: must he be deposed?
The king shall be contented: must he lose
The name of king? o' God's name, let it go.

William Shakespeare

Two or three hours' walking will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. A single farmhouse which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the dominions of the King of Dahomey.

Henry David Thoreau

Telescope, instrument of much knowledge, more precious than any scepter! Is not he who holds thee in his hand made king and lord of the works of God?

Johannes Kepler

Kings cannot ennoble thee, thou good, great soul, for One who is higher than kings hath done that for thee; but a king can confirm thy nobility to men.

The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with commoner things. It is chief of this world'd luxuries, king by grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took: we know it because she repented.

So Judas did to Christ: but he, in twelve,
Found truth in all but one; I, in twelve thousand, none.
God save the king! Will no man say, amen?

William Shakespeare

The color of the king doth come and go,
Between his purpose and his conscience,
Like heralds 'twixt two dreadful battles set:
His passion is so ripe, it needs must break.

William Shakespeare

Kings were put to death long before 21 January, 1793, and before the regicides of the nineteenth century. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interesting in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty for ever.

Every man, who parrots the cry of 'stand by the President' without adding the proviso 'so far as he serves the Republic' takes an attitude as essentially unmanly as that of any Stuart royalist who championed the doctrine that the King could do no wrong. No self-respecting and intelligent free man could take such an attitude.

Theodore Roosevelt

Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.

As the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc, "That, that is, is."

William Shakespeare

If you put together all the Christians in the world, with their Emperors and their Kings, the whole of these Christians, - aye, and throw in the Saracens to boot, - would not have such power, or be able to do so much as this Kublai, who is Lord of all the Tartars in the world.

Time's the king of men;
He's both their parent, and he is their grave,
And gives them what he will, not what they crave.

William Shakespeare

The king is always killed by his courtiers, not by his enemies. The king is over-fed, over-drugged, overindulged; anything to keep the king tied to his throne. Most people in that position never wake up. They either die mentally or physically, or both.

Flesh and blood,
You, brother mine, that entertain'd ambition,
Expell'd remorse and nature, who, with Sebastian-
Whose inward pinches therefore are most strong-
Would here have kill'd your king, I do forgive thee,
Unnatural though thou art.

William Shakespeare

A king is sometimes obliged to commit crimes; but they are the crimes of his position.

Napoleon I of France

Who did you pass on the road?" the King went on, holding out his hand to the Messenger for some more hay. "Nobody," said the Messenger. "Quite right," said the King; "this young lady saw him too. So of course Nobody walks slower than you." "I do my best," the Messenger said in a sullen tone. "I'm sure nobody walks much faster than I do!" "He can't do that," said the King, "or else he'd have been here first.

There has not been any science so much esteemed and honored as this of mathematics, nor with so much industry and vigilance become the care of great men, and labored in by the potentates of the world, viz... emperors, kings, princes, etc.

Benjamin Franklin