100+ Courtiers Quotes | InspiringQuotes.us

source: Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Complete Novels of Joseph Conrad - All 20 Works in One Premium Edition: Including Unforgettable Titles like Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, Under Western Eyes and Many More (With Author’s Letters, Memoirs and Critical Essays)”, p.4441, e-artnow

topic: Death, Wind, Mad, Shipwreck, Courtiers

The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.

- Henry David Thoreau

source: Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.26

topic: Success, Scholar, Thinker, Courtiers

You can smile when your heart is breaking because you're a woman.

- Philippa Gregory

topic: Heart, Courtiers

In the humanist ideal, the mainstream is where interesting debate, the generating of new ideas and creativity take place. In rational society this mainstream is considered uncontrollable and is therefore made marginal. The centre ground is occupied instead by structures and courtiers.

- John Ralston Saul

topic: Creativity, Ideas, Interesting, Courtiers

The room was quiet, the others flicking glances at me. I ignored them. After years in Sounis's palaces being eyed with disgust by my uncle and my own father and courtier after courtier, I assure you I am unrivaled at pretending not to notice other people's glances.

- Megan Whalen Turner

topic: Uncles, Father, Years, Courtiers

The wicked can have only accomplices, the voluptuous have companions in debauchery, self-seekers have associates, the politic assemble the factions, the typical idler has connections, princes have courtiers. Only the virtuous have friends.

- Voltaire

topic: Funny Friendship, Real, Self, Voluptuous, Debauchery

Washington has become our Versailles. We are ruled, entertained, and informed by courtiers -- and the media has evolved into a class of courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are mostly courtiers. Our pundits and experts, at least those with prominent public platforms, are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games, and the purpose behind it is deception.

- Chris Hedges

topic: Mirrors, Media, Games, Stagecraft, Captivated

Leaders of the Church have often been Narcissus, flattered and sickeningly excited by their courtiers. The court is the leprosy of the papacy.

- Pope Francis

topic: Leader, Church, Leprosy, Flattered, Narcissus

The neo-conservatives, who are closely linked to the neo-corporatists, are rather different. They claim to be conservatives, when everything they stand for is a rejection of conservatism. They claim to present an alternate social model, when they are little more than the courtiers of the corporatist movement. Their agitation is filled with the bitterness and cynicism typical of courtiers who scramble for crumbs at the banquet tables of real power, but are always denied a proper chair.

- John Ralston Saul

topic: Real, Rejection, Movement, Crumbs, Courtiers

Art editors and critics - people like me - have become a courtier class.

- Dave Hickey

source: "Doyen of American critics turns his back on the 'nasty, stupid' world of modern art" by Edward Helmore, Paul Gallagher, www.theguardian.com. October 27, 2012.

topic: Art, Editors, Class, Courtiers

Here and there in the ancient literature we encounter legends of wise and mysterious games that were conceived and played by scholars, monks, or the courtiers of cultured princes. These might take the form of chess games in which the pieces and squares had secret meanings in addition to their usual functions.

- Hermann Hesse

topic: Wise, Squares, Games, Courtiers, Ancient Literature

But I shall hear without pain, that I play the courtier very ill, and talk of that which I do not well understand.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

source: Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.150, Graphic Arts Books

topic: Pain, Play, Ill, Courtiers

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

topic: Queens, Heaven, Honor, Courtiers

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

topic: Opportunity, Two, Luxury, Courtiers, Beck And Call

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

source: Source: www.guernicamag.com

topic: Depressing, Issues, Embrace, Courtiers

...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

topic: Class, Long, Royalty, Courtiers

What is known as success assumes nearly as many aliases as there are those who seek it.

- Stephen Birmingham

topic: Success, Assuming, Aliases, Courtiers, Commoners

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

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

topic: Memories, Clothes, Offering, Clamor, Courtiers

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

source: Source: www.aims.ca

topic: Queens, Opportunity, Giving, Curry, Queen Elizabeth

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

topic: Depressing, Art, Struggle, Courtiers

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

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

topic: Disappointment, Grief, Drawing, Courtiers, Another Man

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

- Saadi

topic: Wise, Accomplishment, Wit, Courtiers, Facetious

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

topic: Men, Law, Two, Noble Profession, Courtiers

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

topic: Life, Queens, Wall, Courtiers

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

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

topic: Nice, Humorous, Sadness, Rumination, Courtiers

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

- Francois Rabelais

topic: Men, Unhappy, Corruption, Courtiers

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

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

topic: Boys, Order, Soldier, Plies, Courtiers

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

topic: Life, Attitude, Sleep, Beauty Of Life, Sleeping Beauty

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