King Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Christians are beginning to lose the spirit of intolerance which animated them: experience has shown the error of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and of the persecution of those Christians in France whose belief differed a little from that of the king. They have realized that zeal for the advancement of religion is different from a due attachment to it; and that in order to love it and fulfill its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to it.

Let it never be said by future generations that indifference, cynicism or selfishness made us fail to live up to the ideals of humanism which the Nobel Peace Prize encapsulates. Let the strivings of us all, prove Martin Luther King Jr. to have been correct, when he said that humanity can no longer be tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war.

It was by music that the ancient kings gave elegant expression to their joy. By their armies and axes they gave the same to their anger.

Einstein's relativity work is a magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king... its exponents are brilliant men but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists.

Alice had begun with 'Let's pretend we're kings and queens;' and her sister, who liked being exact, had argued that they couldn't, because there were only two of them, and Alice hand been reduced at last to say, 'Well, you can be one of them then, and I'll be the rest.

I have seen the king with a face of Glory, He who is the eye and the sun of heaven, He who is the companion and healer of all beings, He who is the soul and the universe that births souls.

How hard it is to keep from being king when it's in you and in the situation.

It is not your strength and your natural power that subjects all these people to you. Do not pretend then to rule them by force or to treat them with harshness. Satisfy their reasonable desires; alleviate their necessities; let your pleasure consist in being beneficent; advance them as much as you can, and you will act like the true king of desire.

This principle of opposites is at the very root of Creation, which is divided between the rule of the King and the Queen; Night and Day; the One and the Varied; the Eternal and the Evolving.

Rabindranath Tagore

Faith is born and preserved in us by preaching why Christ came, what be brought and gave to us, and the benefits we obtain when we receive him. This happens when Christian liberty—which he gives to us—is rightly taught and we are told in what way as Christians we are all kings and priests and therefore lords of all.

We are and irrefutable arbiters of value, and in the world of value Nature is only a part. Thus in this world we are greater than Nature. In the world of values, Nature in itself is neutral, neither good nor bad deserving of neither admiration nor censure. It is we who create value and our desires which confer value. In this realm we are kings, and we debase our kingship if we bow down to Nature. It is for us to determine our good life, not for Nature – not even for Nature personified as God.

Bertrand Russell

"How strange," continued the king, with some asperity; "the police think that they have disposed of the whole matter when they say, 'A murder has been committed,' and especially so when they can add, 'And we are on the track of the guilty persons.'"

Alexandre Dumas

A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity, that ever were written.

Thomas Jefferson

God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies—
The captains and the kings depart—
Still stands Thine ancient Sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.

Rudyard Kipling

Posterity alone rightly judges kings. Posterity alone has the right to accord or withhold honors.

Napoleon I of France

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings.

William Shakespeare

No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace
As mercy does.

William Shakespeare

O God! I could be bounded in a nut-shell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

William Shakespeare

Now, blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep! It covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. It is the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap, and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise man, even.

Miguel de Cervantes

A certain great and powerful king once asked a poet: "What can I give you of all that I have?" He wisely replied, "Anything sir... except your secret."

In England, philosophers are honoured, respected; they rise to public offices, they are buried with the kings...In France warrants are issued against them, they are persecuted, pelted with pastoral letters: Do we see that England is any the worse for it?

The people must not be counted upon; they cry indifferently : "Long live the King!" and "Long live the Conspirators!" a proper direction must be given to them, and proper instruments employed to effect it.

Napoleon I of France

There's a reason why so many who marched that day, and in the days to come, were young — for the young are unconstrained by habits of fear, unconstrained by the conventions of what is. They dared to dream differently, to imagine something better. And I am convinced that same imagination, the same hunger of purpose stirs in this generation. We might not face the same dangers of 1963, but the fierce urgency of now remains. We may never duplicate the swelling crowds and dazzling procession of that day so long ago — no one can match King's brilliance — but the same flame that lit the heart of all who are willing to take a first step for justice, I know that flame remains.

'Tis thought the king is dead; we will not stay. The bay trees in our country are all wither'd.

William Shakespeare

Thus Aragorn for the first time in the full light of day beheld Éowyn, Lady of Rohan, and thought her fair, fair and cold, like a morning of pale spring that is not yet come to womanhood. And she was now suddenly aware of him: tall heir of kings, wise with many winters, greycloaked, hiding a power that yet she felt. For a moment still as stone she stood, then turning swiftly she was gone.

J. R. R. Tolkien