Power Quotes

“Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye Than twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet, And I am proof against their enmity.”

“When Caesar says, 'Do this', it is performed.”

“Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar? And the creature run from the cur. There thou mightst behold the great image of authority-a dog's obeyed in office.”

“Some sins do bear their privilege on earth,And so doth yours: your fault was not your folly;Needs must you lay your heart at his dispose,Subjected tribute to commanding love,Against whose fury and unmatched forceThe aweless lion could not wage the fightNor keep his princely heart from Richard's hand.”

“Shall remain! Hear you this Triton of the minnows? Mark you His absolute 'shall'?”

“There is none but heWhose being I do fear; and under himMy genius is rebuked, as it is saidMark Antony's was by Caesar.”

“But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,Lives not alone immured in the brain;But, with the motion of all elements,Courses as swift as thought in every power,And gives to every power a double power,Above their functions and their offices.”

“Tis time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss.”

“Conscience is a thousand swords.”

“A king of infinite space”

“Not all the water in the rough rude sea Can wash the balm from an anointed King.”

“Discharge my followers; let them hence away, From Richard's night to Bolingbrooke's fair day.”

“The eagle suffers little birds to sing, And is not careful what they mean thereby, Knowing that with the shadow of his wings He can at pleasure stint their melody: Even so mayest thou the giddy men of Rome.”

“Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.”

“Plutus himself,That knows the tinct and multiplying med'cine,Hath not in nature's mystery more scienceThan I have in this ring.”

“Equality of two domestic powers Breeds scrupulous faction.”

“O that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth! Then with passion would I shake the world.”

“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”

“O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.”

“O Ceremony, show me but thy worth? What is thy soul of adoration? Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form, Creating awe and fear in other men?”

“Thus play I in one person many people, And none contented: sometimes am I king; Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar, And so I am: then crushing penury Persuades me I was better when a king; Then am I king'd again: and by and by Think that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke, And straight am nothing: but whate'er I be, Nor I nor any man that but man is With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased With being nothing.”

“If you be King, why should not I succeed?”

“The mightier man, the mightier is the thing That makes him honored or begets him hate; For greatest scandal waits on greatest state.”

“I can call spirits from the vasty deep.”

“My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy.”