Emperor Quotes

“Only he who has no use for the empire is fit to be entrusted with it.”
― Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu

“While many find the new clothes of the emperor magnificent, some dare to say out loud, he is simply naked. If the clear sighted are constrained by the credulous and when the “followers” are browbeating the "knowers", the cat is among the pigeons and the age of obscuration is under way. Obviously "something wicked this way comes…" ("His master's voice" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“I was thinking, "So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I'll be able to make people read my books now.”
― Robert Graves, I, Claudius

“Shah Jahan who proved
an emperor to be shorter than a lover,
who turned a grave into a temple
who gave his beloved a place of God
and converted love into a prayer.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“Some say," Scytale said, "that people cling to Imperial leadership because space is infinite. They feel lonely without a unifying symbol. For a lonely people, the Emperor is a definite place. They can turn toward him and say: 'See, there He is. He makes us one.' Perhaps religion serves the same purpose, m'Lord.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“The emperor is naked!"
The parade stopped. The emperor paused. A hush fell over the crowd, until one quick-thinking peasant shouted:
"No, he isn't. The emperor is merely endorsing a clothing-optional lifestyle!”
― James Finn Garner

“Often the wise way is to seek the need, not the want. Want is often tainted by greed and is often wholly self-centred. Need by contrast is often the wish of the heart or soul for something better, something more whole.”
― Robert Reid, The Empress:

“The grandest ambition that any man can possibly have, is to so live, and so improve himself in heart and brain, as to be worthy of the love of some splendid woman; and the grandest ambition of any girl is to make herself worthy of the love and adoration of some magnificent man. That is my idea. There is no success in life without love and marriage. You had better be the emperor of one loving and tender heart, and she the empress of yours, than to be king of the world. The man who has really won the love of one good woman in this world, I do not care if he dies in the ditch a beggar, his life has been a success.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty Of Man, Woman And Child

“This world belongs to the weird ones, and the weird ones become kings.”
― Tamuna Tsertsvadze, Galaxy Pirates

“No ruler can ever get far with only militaristic power. The easiest way to conquer is to crush people’s faith and convert them to your own ideology, often portraying it as heroic. I am an ambitious man – I am not just a casual pirate to steal only people’s riches. I am an emperor – I shall steal people’s hearts, hopes, and faith so that they will eventually have no one but me to turn to. If you put yourself in the role of a saviour, people are sure to follow you, just like a pack of lambs always follows a mighty shepherd.”
― Tamuna Tsertsvadze, Galaxy Pirates

“Do not make assumptions about things you know nothing about. An emperor serves his people. The day the people serve the emperor is the day the empire falls. Remember that, Miko, if nothing else. War profits no peasant.”
― Devin Madson, We Ride the Storm

“Unfortunately, as one of the human writers once said, there’s no progress without bloodshed. During my prison years and many battles afterwards, those words have constantly been recurring in my mind. I came to understand that the emperor character of that book spoke the unfortunate but apparent truth of this world.”
― Tamuna Tsertsvadze, Galaxy Pirates

“The emperor was supposed to be the North Star, but if the sun never set, the North Star never got a chance to shine, and these grand councillors were all determined to make sure that Cixi's sun never set.”
― Ijen Kim, The Sunset Emperor

“But I hated the Emperor of the Ke-Han with everything I had in me, for every man I'd lost and every friend who'd died, for every story I'd known was false but had allowed to harden my heart against the enemy anyway.”
― Danielle Bennett, Shadow Magic

“And should there exist someone endowed with the beauty of a statue and the lyrical eloquence of a nightingale in song, gifted, moreover, with ready wit, then the wearer of the crown can neither sleep nor rest, but his sleep is interrupted, his voluptuousness suppressed, his appetite for pleasure lost, and he is filled with grave apprehensions; with wicked tongue he curses the creator nature for fashioning others suitable to rule and for not making him the first and last and the fairest of men.”
― Niketas Choniates, O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniates

“His opulent funeral was attended by all his subjects, although—due to heavy snowfall—the majority of them were present only in spirit.”
― Yanko Tsvetkov, Codex Hyperboreanus

“Leb, waiss nit wie lang,
Und stürb, waiss nit wann
Muess fahren, waiss nit wohin
Mich wundert, das ich so frelich bin.”
― Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts

“Does one refuse to ride with an Emperor?'

'If one is wise, one does not.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Silver Branch

“She said I would lose my throne, but if I didn't continue the reforms, I would lose my country too. It had never been properly mine anyway, this throne, and it meant less to me than these lands and peoples who'd been entrusted to my hands.”
― Ijen Kim, The Sunset Emperor

“The sun descended, sinking light, tinged with approaching end. I did not want to be the sunset emperor, the one to watch the day fade and falter, powerless to stop the night's advance.”
― Ijen Kim, The Sunset Emperor

“I blinked my eyes hard and pushed the tears away. I would soon mourn my uncle's death, this I knew, but it was not time to mourn my country.”
― Ijen Kim, The Sunset Emperor

“There was no need to fear new things. Shaking hands with a foreigner didn't make me foreign.”
― Ijen Kim, The Sunset Emperor

“Then they did as with the birds, covered me too and shut me away in dark places.”
― Ijen Kim, The Sunset Emperor

“I listened with interest, but thought it too sad a thing that we and the foreigners knew each other only in this way: they came conquering, and we went with apologies forced from our lips.”
― Ijen Kim, The Sunset Emperor

“The night lost its solidity. Sleep tugged me from its grip and tears misted its outline.”
― Ijen Kim, The Sunset Emperor

“They called me Master of Ten Thousand Years, but I was not master of anything, and certainly not of so many inconceivable years. I didn't want ten thousand years. I wanted to eat.”
― Ijen Kim, The Sunset Emperor

“The darkness here was different, much louder for one thing, layered with voices and calls, people coming and going.”
― Ijen Kim, The Sunset Emperor

“This was how we fought war. We drowned the battle sounds in the din of festive music and spent our time on song, dance and ritual.”
― Ijen Kim, The Sunset Emperor

“Cartagia narrowed his eyes. “They seemed too good to be true. And, as we know, when something is too good to be true, it often is.”
― Al Sarrantonio, Personal Agendas

“The Emperor represents structure, order, and regulation-forces to balance the free-flowing, lavish abundance of the Empress.”
― Joan Bunning, The Big Book of Tarot: How to Interpret the Cards and Work with Tarot Spreads for Personal Growth