Empires Quotes - Page 39

• The true key to the declension of the Roman empire which is not to be found in all Gibbon 's immense work may be stated in two words: the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Character, Two, Keys

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1835). “Specimens of the table talk”

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• E?  loquence quipersuade par douceur, non par empire, en tyran, non en roi. Eloquence should persuade gently, not by force or like a tyrant or king.

  Blaise Pascal

  Kings, Tyrants, Roi

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• A thought no less than a thing, an idea equally with an empire, is resolved into a complex of infinitely extensive relations between infinitesimally small parts.

  Sangharakshita

  Ideas, Relation, Small Parts

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• All power is indeed weak compared with that of the thinker. He sits upon the throne of his Empire of Thought, mightier far than they who wield material sceptres.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Thinking, Thrones, Weak

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• Nothing is so fragile as thought in its infancy; an interruption breaks it: nothing is so powerful, even to overturning empires, when it reaches its maturity.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Powerful, Maturity, Break

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• There is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Yield, Connections

  Thomas Jefferson (1853). “The writings of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography, correspondence, reports, messages, addresses, and other writings, official and private : published by the order of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library, from the original manuscripts, deposited in the Department of State”, p.203

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• For we by conquest, of our soveraine might,And by eternall doome of Fate's decree,Have wonne the Empire of the Heavens bright.

  Edmund Spenser

  Fate, Heaven, Might

  Edmund Spenser (1758). “THE FAERIE QUEENE.”, p.429

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• When you look at my life, you can go back to the late 1930s, what I saw was, first of all, Hitler, he was going to live forever. Mussolini was in for 10,000 years. You had the Soviet Union, which was, by definition, going to last forever. There was the British empire -- nobody imagined it could come to an end. So why should one believe in any kind of permanence?

  Doris Lessing

  Believe, Years, Forever

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• Well I've got to get out of the rat-race now I'm tired of the ways of mice and men And the empires all turning into rust again. Out of everything nothing remains the same That's why I'm cloud hidden Cloud hidden Whereabouts unknown.

  Van Morrison

  Tired, Men, Clouds

  Song: Alan Watts Blues, Album: Poetic Champions Compose

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• That public men publish falsehoods Is nothing new. That America must accept Like the historical republics corruption and empire Has been known for years. Be angry at the sun for setting If these things anger you.

  Robinson Jeffers

  Men, America, Years

  Robinson Jeffers, Tim Hunt (1988). “The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers: 1938-1962”, p.24, Stanford University Press

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• In the various states of society, armies are recruited from very different motives. Barbarians are urged by the love of war; the citizens of a free republic may be prompted by a principle of duty; the subjects, or at least the nobles, of a monarchy, are animated by a sentiment of honor; but the timid and luxurious inhabitants of a declining empire must be allured into the service by the hopes of profit, or compelled by the dread of punishment.

  Edward Gibbon

  Military, War, Army

  Edward Gibbon (2016). “EDWARD GIBBON Premium Collection: Historiographical Works, Memoirs & Letters: Including "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.731, e-artnow

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• I have often before now been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire.

  Thucydides

  Democracy, Incapable, Convinced

  Thucydides, Victor Davis Hanson, Robert B. Strassler (2008). “The Landmark Thucydides”, p.176, Simon and Schuster

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• The wide difference between the two characters, the slowness and want of energy of the Spartans as contrasted with the dash and enterprise of their opponents, proved of the greatest service, especially to a maritime empire like Athens. Indeed this was shown by the Syracusans, who were most like the Athenians in character, and also most successful in combating them.

  Thucydides

  Character, Successful, Two

  Thucydides (1978). “The history of the Peloponnesian War: illustrated with maps from the 1820 Oxford edition”

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• As yourselves your empires fall, and every kingdom hath a grave.

  William Habington

  Fall, Kingdoms, Royalty

  William Habington, “Nox Nocti Indicat Scientiam”

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• I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India.

  Muhammad Iqbal

  Destiny, Government, Self

  Sir Muhammad Iqbal (1978). “Letters of Iqbal”

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• He [Julius Caesar] learned that Alexander , having completed nearly all his conquests by the time he was thirty-two years old, was at an utter loss to know what he should do during the rest of his life, whereat Augustus expressed his surprise that Alexander did not regard it as a greater task to set in order the empire which he had won than to win it.

  Augustus

  Loss, Winning, Order

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• There is no surer mark of a low and unregenerate nature than this tendency of power to loudness and wantonness instead of quietness and reverence. To souls baptized in Christian nobleness the largest sphere of command is but a wider empire of obedience, calling them, not to escape from holy rule, but to its full impersonation.

  James Martineau

  Christian, Power, Baptized In

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 456), 1895.

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• Dyspepsy is the ruin of most things: empires, expeditions, and everything else.

  Thomas de Quincey

  Ruins, Expeditions

  Autograph letter from De Quincey addressed to J.A. Hessey, December 3, 1823.

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• If the prince of a State love benevolence, he will have no opponent in all the empire.

  Mencius

  Love Is, Government, Opponents

  Confucius, Mencius, Ming Zuoqiu, Tso-ch'iu Ming (1861). “The Chinese Classics”, p.174

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• The sun never sets on the immense empire of Charles V.

  Walter Scott

  Sun, Possession, Immense

  Walter Scott (2010). “The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, Emperor of the French: With a Preliminary View of the French Revolution”, p.141, Cambridge University Press

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• The world's great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn; Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Weed, Dream, Winter

  'Hellas' (1822) l. 1060

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• But the line of thought that I'd been chasing for several days was implicit in the ruins of the old Roman Empire, which gradually destroyed itself by substituting the faith in a legion of miraculous words for the strength of armies and the weight of walls.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Wall, Army, Ruins

  Lewis H. Lapham (1997). “Waiting for the Barbarians”, p.186, Verso

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• America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire. The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known. We were born out of revolution against an empire. We were founded upon the ideal that all are created equal. And we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give meaning to those words, within our borders and around the world. We are shaped by every culture. Drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept, E pluribus unum: Out of many, one.

  Barack Obama

  Simple, Self, Blood

  A New Beginning: Speech at Cairo University, delivered 4 June 2009, Cairo, Egypt

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• The empire of woman is an empire of softness, of address, of complacency. Her commands are caresses, her menaces are tears.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Women, Tears, Addresses

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• Women, rouse yourselves! The tocsin of reason resounds through the whole universe: recognize your rights. The powerful empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudices, fanaticism, superstition and lies.

  Olympe de Gouges

  Powerful, Lying, Rights

  Olympe de Gouges (1989). “The Rights of Woman”

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