Lords Quotes
More Lords Quotes
Vastly inferior as this Court is to the House of Commons, considered as a body in the State, and amenable as its members may be for illconduct in their office to its animadversions and certainly are to its impeachment before the Lords, yet, as a Court of law, we know no superior but those Courts which may revise our judgments for error; and in this respect there is no common term of comparison between this Court and the House.
— Coleridge, J., Stockdale v. Hansard (1837), 3 St. Tr. (N. S.) 931. "I have yet to learn that this Court is to be restrained by the dignity or the power of anybody, however exalted, from fearlessly, though respectfully, examining their reasonableness and justice, where the rights of third parties, in litigation before us, depend upon their validity". Coleridge, J., id.
In my mind, he was guilty of no error he — was chargeable with no exaggeration — he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said that all we see about us, Kings, Lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve men into a box.
brougham, henry, 1st baron brougham and vaux— Present State of the Law (February 7, 1828).
— all these Dark Lords intent on creating wastelands packed with enslaved victims ... for what?
steven erikson— SF Site Interview
The true simple question of the present dispute is, whether the House of Lords and Court Influence shall predominate over the House of Commons, and annihilate its existence, or whether the House of Commons...shall have power to....regulate the prerogative of the Crown, which was ever ready to seize upon the freedom of the Electors of this country.
charles james fox— Speech to his constituents in Westminster (1784), quoted in W. T. Laprade, 'William Pitt and the Westminster Election', American Historical Review, 23 (1912), p. 263.
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,I see the Lords of humankind pass by.
Oliver Goldsmith— Line 327.
They do not ill, being Lords of ours, to slay Me; nay, they could not spare: but thee to slay, To spill thy strong young life for truth to me, In all men's eyes would mark them monstrous:;: thou Must live, and serve my slayers, and serving them Sustain my memory by the proof if God Shall give thee grace to prove it that thy name, Thy father's name and mine, in true men's ears Rings truth, and means not treason.
algernon charles swinburne— Faliero, Act V. Sc. 3.
This man I thought had been a Lord among wits; but, I find, he is only a wit among Lords.
— 1754 Of Lord Chesterfield. Quoted in James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.1.
Every man has a House of Lords in his own head. Fears, prejudices, misconceptionsthose are the peers, and theyare hereditary.
Lloyd George (of Dwyfor), David, 1st Earl— 1927 Speech, Cambridge.
Lords and Commons of England, consider what nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to.
john milton— 1644 Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.
Lords are lordliest in their wine.
john milton— 1671Samson Agonistes, l.1418.
This well may be The Day of Judgment which the world awaits; But be it so or not, I only know my present duty, and my Lord’s command to occupy till He come. So at the post where He hath set me in His providence, I choose, for one, to meet Him face to face, no faithless servant frightened from my task, but ready when the Lord of the harvest calls; and therefore, with all reverence, I would say, let God do His work, we will see to ours. Bring in the candles.
abraham davenport— As quoted by John Greenleaf Whittier in his poem "Abraham Davenport" first published in The Atlantic Monthly (May 1866); later published in The Tent on the Beach, and Other Poems (1867).
I have always said, that, without commerce...this island could not possibly continue to be great...but, it is the system of rendering every thing commercial; of making merchants and bankers into Lords; of making a set of fund-dealers the distributors of honours and rewards...it is this system that I reprobate.
william cobbett— Political Register (11 January 1806), quoted in Karl W. Schweizer and John W. Osborne, Cobbett and His Times (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1990), p. 15.
Wisdom made him old and wary Banishing the Lords of Faery. Wisdom made a breach and battered Babylon to bits: she scattered To the hedges and ditches All our nursery gnomes and witches.
robert graves— "Babylon"
[Of Lord Chesterfield] This man, I thought, had been a Lord among wits; but, I find, he is only a wit among Lords!
samuel johnson— 1754.
One should not be amazed ... that this Ganges is really Power , for is she not the Supreme Shakti of the Eternal Shiva, taken in the form of water? This Ganges, filled with the sweet wine of compassion , was sent out for the salvation of the world by Shiva, the Lord of the Lords. Good people should not think this Triple-Pathed River to be like the thousand other earthly rivers, filled with water.
— Ganga Mahatmay, Kashi Khanda, p.48 (Aghor Medicine: Pollution, Death, and Healing in Northern India (3 February 2008)])
The Law is the true embodiment of everything that's excellent. It has no kind of fault or flaw, and I, my Lords, embody the Law.
— W.S. Gilbert, in Iolanthe (1882)
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay; Princes and Lords may flourish, or may fade A breath can make them, as a breath has made But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroy'd can never be supplied.
Oliver Goldsmith— Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village (1770), line 51.
Let not the heavens hear these tell-tale women Rail on the Lord’s anointed.
— King Richard, scene iv (Act IV)
ButOh! ye Lords of ladies intellectual, Inform us truly, have they not hen-pecked you all?.
Rochdale— 1819-24 Don Juan, canto1, stanza 22.
Men of England, wherefore plough For the Lords who lay you low?
Percy Bysshe Shelley— 1819 'Song to the Men of England'.
When women are the advisers, the Lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do. Then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it. If it fails, they generously give her the whole.
Louisa May Alcott— Ch. 41 : Learning To Forget
My Lords, we are vertebrate animals, we are mammalia! My learned friend's manner would be intolerable in Almighty God to a black beetle.
william henry maule— On the Authority of Lord Coleridge; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 493.
The monk, the inquisitor, and the Jesuit were Lords of Spain,— sovereigns of her sovereign, for they had formed the dark and narrow mind of that tyrannical recluse. They had formed the minds of her people, quenched in blood every spark of rising heresy, and given over a noble nation to a bigotry blind and inexorable as the doom of fate. Linked with pride, ambition, avarice, every passion of a rich, strong nature, potent for good and ill, it made the Spaniard of that day a scourge as dire as ever fell on man.
francis parkman— Pt. I, Ch. 7 Menendez
My Lords, we are vertebrate animals, we are mammalia! My learned friend's manner would be intolerable in Almighty God to a black beetle.
— William Henry Maule, to the Court, on the Authority of Lord Coleridge.
In all climes we pitch out tents, Cronies of the elements, With the secret Lords of birth Intimate and free.
— The Wander-lovers.
I know about your [British] system of democracy, but in that system the workers 'hold keys of straw', as an expression of ours puts it. It is democracy for the capitalists, for the Lords, but not for the workers. When we win we shall establish democracy, but not like that democracy of yours.
— Enver Hoxha (1986) The Artful Albanian, (Chatto & Windus, London), ISBN 0701129700
There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart Lords.
john muir— John Muir, A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916).
