Quotes about kings

The supreme, the merciless, the destroyer of opposition, the exalted King, the shepherd, the protector of the quarters of the world, the King the word of whose mouth destroys mountains and seas, who by his lordly attack has forced mighty and merciless Kings from the rising of the sun to the setting of the same to acknowledge one supremacy.

— Ashurnasirpal

He that can work is born to be king of something.

— Thomas Carlyle

Kings fight for empires, madmen for applause.

— John Dryden

I cannot be indifferent to the assassination of a member of my profession, We should be obliged to shut up business if we, the Kings, were to consider the assassination of Kings as of no consequence at all.

— Edward VII

If you shoot at a king you must kill him.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

In a few years there will be only five kings in the world -- the King of England and the four kings in a pack of cards.

— Farouk I

Kings govern by popular assemblies only when they cannot do without them.

— Charles James Fox

They say that kings are made in the image of God. If that is what he looks like, I feel sorry for God.

— (Frederick II) Frederick The Great

Don't forget your great guns, which are the most respectable arguments of the rights of kings.

— (Frederick II) Frederick The Great

The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth: for kings are not only God's Lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called Gods.

— James I of England

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

— Helen Keller

A king should die on his feet.

— Louis XVIII

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

— Christopher Marlowe

Kings in this should imitate God, their mercy should be above their works.

— William Penn

Who does not know that kings and rulers sprang from men who were ignorant of God, who assumed because of blind greed and intolerable presumption to make themselves masters of other men, their equals, by means of pride, violence, bad faith, murder, and almost every other kind of crime? Surely the devil drove them on.

— Pope Gregory VII

Kings have many ears and eyes.

— Proverb

A king is a thing men have made for their own sakes, for quietness sake. Just as in a family one man is appointed to buy the meat.

— John Selden

The foremost art of kings is the ability to endure hatred.

— Seneca

He is a king who fears nothing, he is a king who desires nothing!

— Seneca

Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination.

— George Bernard Shaw

Divine right of kings means the divine right of anyone who can get uppermost.

— Herbert Spencer

All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. It's the way they're raised.

— Mark Twain