Tyrant Quotes
More Tyrant Quotes
Alike were they free from Fear, that reigns with the tyrant, and envy, the vice of republics. Neither locks had they to their doors, nor bars to their windows; But their dwellings were open as day and the hearts of their owners; There the richest was poor, and the poorest lived in abundance.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— Part I, section 1
Notwithstanding my experiments with electricity the thunderbolt continues to fall under our noses and beards; and as for the tyrant, there are a million of us still engaged at snatching away his sceptre.
— Benjamin Franklin, comment on Tubgot's inscription in a letter to Felix Nogaret, who translated the lines into French.
Skiddaw shews its vast base, and bounding all that part of the vale, rises gently to a height that sinks the neighboring hills; opens a pleasing front, smooth and verdant, smiling over the country like a gentle generous lord, while the fells of Borrowdale frown on it like a hardened tyrant.
— Thomas Pennant A Tour in Scotland, and Voyage to the Hebrides (London: Benjamin White, [1774-6] 1790) p. 46
The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of Westerly weather, is an impassive-faced tyrant with a sharp poniard held behind his back for a treacherous stab.
joseph conrad— The Mirror of the Sea, (1906), ch. 28.
How strangely will the Tools of a tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!
Samuel Adams— Letter to John Pitts (21 January 1776)
Thou tyrant, tyrant Jealousy, Thou tyrant of the mind!
john dryden— 1694 Love Triumphant, act 3, sc.1,'Song of Jealousy'.
In buskined measures move Pale Grief and pleasing Pain, With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast.
thomas gray— 1757 The Bard. A Pindaric Ode, l.128-30.
E? loquence quipersuade par douceur, non par empire, en tyran, non en roi. Eloquence should persuade gently, not by force or like a tyrant or king.
Blaise Pascal— c.1654-1662 Pense es, pt.1, no.15.
The method of rule of the tyrant and the oligarch is quite simply to clobber, coerce, or overawe all or most other groups in the interest of their own.
bernard crick— Chapter 1, The Nature Of Political Rule, p. 18
Let us render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by which he can trace the footprints of our flying brother.
frederick douglass— Ch. 11 (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845))
Only that he may conformTo tyrant custom.
guillaume de salluste du bartas— Second Week, Third Day, Part ii. Compare: "The tyrant custom", William Shakespeare, Othello, act i. sc. 3, line 230.
So now, for mercy and honor shown to my people, my lord is barbarous; a tyrant, because he punished his would-be murderers, the right of their meanest citizen; a mere vaunting soldier, though wherever he went he brought Greece with him, the Greece he honored, of which these liars are the unworthy heirs.
mary renault— p. 269 (The Persian Boy (1972))
The tyrant puts down his own rebellion, everywhere.
james richardson— #77 (Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001))
There is nothing more hostile to a city that a tyrant, under whom in the first and chiefest place, there are not laws in common, but one man, keeping the law himself to himself, has the sway, and this is no longer equal.
Euripides— Suppliants.
Unanimity of opinion may be fitting for a church, for the frightened or greedy victims of some (ancient, or modern) myth, or for the weak and willing followers of some tyrant. Variety of opinion is necessary for objective knowledge . And a method that encourages variety is also the only method that is comparable with a humanitarian outlook.
paul karl feyerabend— pg 46 (Against Method (1975))
Love is the tyrant of the heart; it darkens Reason, confounds discretion; deaf to Counsel It runs a headlong course to desperate madness.
— Act III, sc. iii.
Of all wild beasts preserve me from a tyrant; and of all tame, a flatterer.
Ben Jonson— Sejanus (1603), Act I.
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
Plato— 566e (Book VIII)
A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.
bertrand russell— Ch. 1: Mysticism and Logic.
“Not in the least. I have but one ambition.” “And that is :;?” “To be the serviceable slave of my country.” “A master is more serviceable than a slave,” said the old man. “No; no; I deny it. I can admit much from you, but I cannot admit that. The politician who becomes the master of his country sinks from the statesman to the tyrant.”
Anthony Trollope— Ch. 58 (Phineas Redux (1874))
The tyrant custom, most grave senators, Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war My thrice-driven bed of down.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act I, scene 3, line 230.
Now you fear punishment and beg for your lives, so I will let you free, if not for any other reason so that you can see the difference between a Greek king and a barbarian tyrant, so do not expect to suffer any harm from me. A king does not kill messengers.
— As quoted in the Historia Alexandri Magni of Pseudo-Kallisthenes, 1.37.9-13
Gaily I lived as ease and nature taught, And spent my little life without a thought, And am amazed that Death, that tyrant grim, Should think of me, who never thought of him.
— Abbé Regnier; Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 787-90.
