William Shakespeare Quotes

To be a king and wear a crown is a thing more glorious to them that see it than it is pleasant to them that bear it.

What are kings, when regiment is gone, but perfect shadows in a sunshine day?

I lack the strength needed to sustain the scepter. I abhorred it, but in the end I agreed to accept it in order to prevent evils to the country which was about to succumb anew, if not to the former slavery, at least to the horrors of anarchy.

Rulers come and go; governments end and forms of government change; but sovereignty survives.

King's entreaties are commands.

In Spain the king rules, but in the Sierra I do.

You need a head of state--with continuity. Sometimes this is more important than political power.

If a great multitude of men should call one of their number King, unless this instituted Prince, appear in greater visible splendor then others, can reward those that obey and please him, and do the contrary to others; his Institution signifies little, even although he chance to have greater corporal or mental faculties, than any other of the number

It is certain that, so soon as the people submit to a king, really such, they have no longer the supreme power.

Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; The subject, not the citizen; for kings And subjects, mutual foes, forever play A losing game into each other's hands, Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.

It is an old prerogative of kings to govern everything but their passions.

Deception is the knowledge of kings.

Let this stand then as a settled maxim of the law of nature, never to be shaken by any artifices of flatterers, that the senate, or the people, are superior to kings, be they good or bad: which is but what you yourself do in effect confess when you tell us that the authority of kings was derived from the people. For that power which they transferred to princes doth yet naturally, or, as I may say, virtually, reside in themselves notwithstanding.

Kings scarcely recognize themselves as mortals, scarcely understand that which pertains to man, except on the day they are made king or on the day they die. On the former day they feign humility and gentleness, in the hope of capturing the voice of the people. On the latter, having death before their eyes, they confess what is a fact, namely that they are wretchedly mortal.

For the first time in my life, I have to grab the monks by the throat. Me! The most religious man in the Kingdom! Because I've had enough- more than enough! My subjects and the elite among my subjects must obey!

The struggle for power in our day lies not between Crown and people, or between a caste of nobles and a bourgeoisie, but between the classes who have property and the classes who have none.

One man may as easily destroy, as govern: be King or Anti-King.

The kings of modern thought are dumb.

To bear the country's disgrace is to rule the shrines of soil and grain. To bear the country's misfortunes is to be the king of the world.

Rigorous authority and justice are the kindness of kings.

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

A born king is a very rare being.

The king's name is a tower of strength.

What the King dreams, the Hand builds.

It is no bad thing to be a king-to see one's house enriched and one's authority enhanced.