Jean de la Bruyere Quotes

Eminent station makes great men more great, and little ones less.

Great offices will have great talents.

On the bright side," Percy said, "both Jason and I outrank you, Octavian. So we can both tell you to shut up.

Powerful people get away with things. That's one way to demonstrate their difference from the rest of us.

America's a great country - you better believe it's a great country, one of the greatest on this planet - but even the greatest needs to pay attention. I wish the powerful sources that run this country could understand that.

In America, everybody is, but some are more than others.

The maxims for success laid out by the powerful are never much good as guides for those who aren't powerful.

Clout is something some seem to have-until they try exercising it.

To-day a democrat of the old school would demand, not freedom for the press, but freedom from the press; but mean-time the leaders have changed themselves into parvenus who have to secure their position vis-a-vis the masses.

To be a woman condemned to a wretched and disgraceful punishment is no impediment to beauty, but it is an insurmountable obstacle to power. Like all persons of real genius, her ladyship well knew what accorded with her nature and her means. Poverty disgusted her -subjection deprived her of two-thirds of her greatness. Her ladyship was only a queen amongst queens: the enjoyment of satisfied pride was essential to her sway. To command beings of an inferior nature, was, to her, rather a humiliation than a pleasure.

This is not just a simple story of "money can't buy happiness." Or maybe that's just what it is. And if it is, why shouldn't it be? Because if this is something we are already supposed to know, then why don't we know it? Why do we chase and scrabble and fight for things to flaunt, why? Why do we reach for power over other people, and through the thin superiority of our possessions, believe we have it? Why do we let money make people bigger, and allow those without it to be made smaller? How did we lose the truth in the frantic, tribal drumbeat of more, more, more?

Lords are lordliest in their wine.

Lack of power and opportunity passes off too often for virtue.

When slavery is established in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom.

Political men, like goats, usually thrive best among inequalities.

There is no reason why a king should be rich or a rich man should be a king, no reason at all.

If a man is endowed with a noble and courageous soul, if he is painstaking, proud, ambitious, without meanness, of a profound a deep-seated intelligence, I dare assert that he lacks nothing to be neglected by the great and men in high office, who fear, more than other men, those whom they cannot dominate.

A man's a man. But when you see a king, you see the work of many thousand men.

The luxury to disparage freedom is the privilege of those who already possess it.

Those who live in the best cliffs think they are better than us. That is always man's attitude when he has power.

After this time I surpassed all others in authority, but I had no more power than the others who were also my colleagues in office.

A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at five or six great men- yes, and then to get around them.

If thou hast no inferiors, have patience awhile, and thou shalt have no superiors. The grave requires no marshal.

There are elites that are real leaders and role models. There are elites that are really selfish and want to pull up the ladder once they've reached the roof.

Sandar came to stand beside him, frowning down at the crumpled High Lord. "He does not look so mighty lying there," he said wonderingly. "He does not look so much greater than me.