Courtiers Quotes - Page 2

• To the courtiers flushed with wine, life was pleasure, and pleasure life.

  Eiji Yoshikawa

  Wine, Pleasure

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• To serve Mary and to be her courtier is the greatest honor we can possibly possess; for to serve the Queen of Heaven is already to reign there; and to live under her command is more than to govern.

  John of Damascus

  Queens, Heaven, Honor

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• Though freedom and wealth are both good things which most of us desire and though we often need both to obtain what we wish, they still remain different. Whether or not I am my own master and can follow my own choice and whether the possibilities from which I must choose are many or few are two entirely different questions. The courtier living in the lap of luxury but at the beck and call of his prince may be much less free than a poor peasant or artisan, less able to live his own life and to choose his own opportunities for usefulness.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Opportunity, Two, Luxury

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• It is depressing but not shocking to witness the liberal intelligentsia embrace Ari Shavit so enthusiastically. Shavit is someone who is as consistently wrong as Thomas Friedman on major issues, and at least as much a courtier of power.

  Max Blumenthal

  Depressing, Issues, Embrace

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• ...many of the officials, courtiers, and priests, representing the upper class of Egyptian society but not the royalty, looked strikingly like modern Europeans, especially long-headed ones

  Carleton S. Coon

  Class, Long, Royalty

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• The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Father, Men, Race

  Henry David Thoreau (1995). “Walden, Or, Life in the Woods”, p.9, Courier Corporation

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• What is known as success assumes nearly as many aliases as there are those who seek it. Like love, it can come to commoners as well as courtiers. Like virtue, it is its own reward. Like the Holy Grail, it seldom appears to those who don't pursue it.

  Stephen Birmingham

  Like Love, Holy Grail, Rewards

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• Days pass when I forget the mystery. Problems insoluble and problems offering their own ignored solutions jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing their colored clothes; caps and bells. And then once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the throng's clamor recedes: the mystery that there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything, rather than void: and that, 0 Lord, Creator, Hallowed one, You still, hour by hour sustain it.

  Denise Levertov

  Memories, Clothes, Offering

  Denise Levertov (1997). “The Stream & the Sapphire: Selected Poems on Religious Themes”, p.33, New Directions Publishing

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• Imagine that Queen Elizabeth I, in her time, had the opportunity to give out a monopoly for playing cards within the kingdom. She knew she was going to give it to one of her courtiers. These courtiers would then all try to curry her favour. Meanwhile, they would not contribute anything to the product of the kingdom, in fact, they were wasting resources trying to secure a single prize. That, more or less, is rent seeking.

  James M. Buchanan

  Queens, Opportunity, Giving

  Source: www.aims.ca

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• And why does England thus persecute the votaries of her science? Why does she depress them to the level of her hewers of wood and her drawers of water? Is it because science flatters no courtier, mingles in no political strife? ... Can we behold unmoved the science of England, the vital principle of her arts, struggling for existence, the meek and unarmed victim of political strife?

  David Brewster

  Depressing, Art, Struggle

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• It is commonly supposed that the uniformity of a studious life affords no matter for narration: but the truth is, that of the most studious life a great part passes without study. An author partakes of the common condition of humanity; he is born and married like another man; he has hopes and fears, expectations and disappointments, griefs and joys, and friends and enemies, like a courtier or a statesman; nor can I conceive why his affairs shuld not excite curiosity as much as the whisper of a drawing-room, or the factions of a camp.

  Samuel Johnson

  Disappointment, Grief, Drawing

  Samuel Johnson (1836). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.: D., with an Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.453

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• To be over much facetious is the accomplishment of courtiers and blemish of the wise.

  Saadi

  Wise, Accomplishment, Wit

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• Greediness consists in ravishing the goods of another through violence or cunning, as in the two noble professions of the conqueror and courtier. But the merchant, like all other industrious men, seeks his benefit only in his talent, in virtue of freely arrived at agreements, and appealing to faith and the laws.

  Augustin Thierry

  Philosophy, Men, Law

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• I would not be a rose upon the wall
  A queen might stop at, near the palace-door,
  To say to a courtier, "Pluck that rose for me,
  It's prettier than the rest." O Romney Leigh!
  I'd rather far be trodden by his foot,
  Than lie in a great queen's bosom.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Life, Queens, Wall

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1857). “Aurora Leigh”, p.129

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• I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud; not the soldier's which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous sadness.

  William Shakespeare

  Nice, Humorous, Sadness

  William Shakespeare (2012). “Comedies of Shakespeare in Plain and Simple English (a Modern Translation and the Original Version)”, p.747, BookCaps Study Guides

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• Oh how unhappy is the prince served by such men who are so easily corrupted.

  Francois Rabelais

  Men, Unhappy, Corruption

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• Until the end of the Middle Ages, and in many cases afterwards too, in order to obtain initiation in a trade of any sort whatever--whether that of courtier, soldier, administrator, merchant or workman--a boy did not amass the knowledge necessary to ply that trade before entering it, but threw himself into it; he then acquired the necessary knowledge.

  Philippe Aries

  Boys, Order, Soldier

  Philippe Ariès (1962). “Centuries of childhood: a social history of family life”, Vintage

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• In the common words we use every day, souls of past races, the thoughts and feelings of individual men stand around us, not dead, but frozen into their attitudes like the courtiers in the garden of the Sleeping Beauty.

  Owen Barfield

  Life, Attitude, Sleep

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• The man who bows before the ruler, shows his behind to the courtiers

  Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

  Men, Bows, He Man

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• Loyalty in time of need is possibly one of the noblest of victories a courtier can win over himself.

  Honore de Balzac

  Loyalty, Winning, Victory

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• All live by seeming.
  The beggar begs with it, and the gay courtier
  Gains land and title, rank and rule, by seeming;
  The clergy scorn it not, and the bold soldier
  Will eke with it his service.--All admit it,
  All practise it; and he who is content
  With showing what he is, shall have small credit
  In church, or camp, or state.--So wags the world.

  Walter Scott

  Gay, Land, Hypocrisy

  sir Walter Scott (bart [novels, collected]) (1862). “The Waverley novels. 25 vols.”, p.260

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• I am a courtier grave and serious Who is about to kiss your hand: Try to combine a pose imperious With a demeanour nobly bland.

  W. S. Gilbert

  Kissing, Hands, Trying

  1889 The Gondoliers, act 2.

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• A rule that may serve for a statesman, a courtier, or a lovernever make a defence or an apology before you be accused.

  Charles I of England

  Apology, May, Accused

  1636 Letter to Lord Wentworth, 3 Sep.

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