Emperor Quotes

1. "I read Claire Messud's 'The Emperor's Children,' I read Joseph O'Neill's 'Netherland' - but to me, they're not 9/11 novels. In 'The Emperor's Children,' 9/11 felt to me like a piece of the plot; the novel wasn't wrestling with what 9/11 meant. And 'Netherland' felt the same way. I liked both books a lot but I don't see them as 9/11 novels."
Author: Amy Waldman

2. "What responsibility are you avoiding...He wasn't avoiding responsibility...Though there was one thing he clung to. An excuse, perhaps, like the dead emperor. It was the soul of the wretch. Apathy. The belief that nothing was his fault, the belief that he couldn't change anything. If a man was cursed, or if he believed he didn't have to care, then he didn't need to hurt when he failed. Those failures couldn't have been prevented. Someone or something else had ordained them."
Author: Brandon Sanderson

3. "All right, beautiful. You've got me tied down to this stone table, and there's a knife in your hand that says you get to rule Narnia for another hundred years. So maybe I die, and winter goes on. Maybe the hunger and the darkness and the fear never end. But as long as the children believe in me, I know that Aslan will live again. I, the Great Lion, Son of The Emperor Over The Sea, will live again and -- aaaaauugh!!"
Author: C.S. Lewis

4. "All things that move between the quiet polesShall be at my command. Emperors and kingsAre but obey'd in their several provinces,Nor can they raise the wind, or rend the clouds;But his dominion that exceeds in thisStretcheth as far as doth the mind of man!A sound magician is a mighty god."
Author: Christopher Marlowe

5. "Bow down, I am the emperor of dreams."
Author: Clark Ashton Smith

6. "A lot of writers whom I love, admire and call friends share this feeling, which is this fundamental idea that we're frauds. That we will be pushed out on to the stage, and it will be revealed that the emperor has no clothes."
Author: Damon Lindelof

7. "I was there, the day that Horus killed the Emperor"
Author: Dan Abnett

8. "Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular. The soldan of Egypt, or the emperor of Rome, might drive his harmless subjects, like brute beasts, against their sentiments and inclination. But he must at least have led his mamalukes, or prætorian bands, like men, by their opinion."
Author: David Hume

9. "Through his mad fancying he remembered Mokunosuke's words: "Whoever you are, you are a man after all. You are no cripple with those fine limbs." Whether he was the son of an emperor or the child of an intrigue, was he not a child of the heavens and the earth?"
Author: Eiji Yoshikawa

10. "On the Russian revolutionaries:To leave your parents, faithful and loyal subjects of the Emperor, to leave your profession, to desist from having children, to lose your fortune, and to give up your civil honor, all for revolutionary conviction, makes for a league of more practical proof than any religious order."
Author: Eugen Rosenstock Huessy

11. "My brother comes now," Alia said. "Even an Emperor may tremble before Muad'Dib, for he has the strength of righteousness and heaven smiles upon him."
Author: Frank Herbert

12. "...but she wrote out some extra words on a piece of paper so Rain could practice reading. "Is this a magic spell?" the girl asked her."Don't let me get sappy on you, but when you get right down to it, every collection of letters is a magic spell, even if it is a moronic proclamation by the Emperor.  Words have their impact, girl.  Mind your manners.  I may not know how to fly but I know how to read, and that's almost the same thing."-Out of Oz"
Author: Gregory Maguire

13. "Captain West advanced to meet me, and before our outstretched hands touched, before his face broke from repose to greeting and the lips moved to speech, I got the first astonishing impact of his personality. Long, lean, in his face a touch of race I as yet could only sense, he was as cool as the day was cold, as poised as a king or emperor, as remote as the farthest fixed star, as neutral as a proposition of Euclid. And then, just ere our hands met, a twinkle of--oh--such distant and controlled geniality quickened the many tiny wrinkles in the corner of the eyes; the clear blue of the eyes was suffused by an almost colourful warmth; the face, too, seemed similarly to suffuse; the thin lips, harsh-set the instant before, were as gracious as Bernhardt's when she moulds sound into speech."
Author: Jack London

14. "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!"
Author: James Finn Garner

15. "The newly created Darth Vader flexes his Force-muscle as the Emperor's enforcer to maintain order and obedience in a galaxy reeling from civil war and the destruction of the Jedi Order. To the galaxy at large, Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker - the Chosen One - died on Coruscant during the siege of the Jedi Temple. And, to some extent, the was true - Anakin was dead. But from the site of Anakin Skywalker's last stand - on the molten surface of the planet Mustafa, where he sought to destroy his friend and former master, Obi-Wan Kanobi - a fearsome spectre in black has risen. Once the most powerful Knight ever known to the Jedi order he is not a disciple of the dark side, a lord of the dreaded Sith, and the avenging right hand of the galaxy's ruthless new Emperor. Seduced, deranged and destroyed by the machinations of the Dark Lord Sidious, Anakin Skywalker is dead ... and Darth Vader lives ..."
Author: James Luceno

16. "Evil turned out not to be a grand thing. Not sneering Emperors with their world-conquering designs. Not cackling demons plotting in the darkness beyond the world. It was small men with their small acts and their small reasons. It was selfishness and carelessness and waste. It was bad luck, incompetence, and stupidity. It was violence divorced from conscience or consequence. It was high ideals, even, and low methods."
Author: Joe Abercrombie

17. "I took her hand in mine, not the way I used to hold hers as a child, but with our fingers woven together. And we strode through the archway of emperors and into the open -- hand in hand, my mother and I."
Author: Justina Chen

18. "Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love."
Author: Kahlil Gibran

19. "An emperor walks with his court through many fields of roses until they come to a barren spot. There he sees one rose. "It's the most beautiful rose I've ever seen!" the emperor cries. Those walking with him point out that he'd just been through a field of similar roses. "Yes, but THIS one I can see."
Author: Kathleen Flinn

20. "An explanation." Sicarius regarded her intently. "Clarify the situation with the emperor. I could not understand the incoherent jumble you spit out before falling unconscious."
Author: Lindsay Buroker

21. "Sicarius padded toward the exit, his soft black boots silent on the tile floor. He paused in the doorway and glanced at the backs of the two older men. The emperor emitted a nervous chuckle. "You trained him too well, Hollow. The man bothers me." "He is loyal." "I know. You did a good job. I ought to give you Sespian to work with. The boy is disappointing." "He does seem soft," Hollowcrest said. "Did you hear that scream? I would've been fascinated by severed heads at that age." "You're fascinated with them now, Sire.""True enough." They shared a laugh and headed for the door. Sicarius slipped away before they noticed him."
Author: Lindsay Buroker

22. "Europeans are forever the offspring of Machiavelli, trapped in a historical rollercoaster that can bring us a monarchy-toppling French Revolution and then a few years later Napoleon Bonaparte as emperor."
Author: Loretta Napoleoni

23. "They used Akbar's principles to formulate a version of Islam that could peacefully co-exist with other religions (or so they claimed). An Emperor's Bequest to Islam, their joint 1,300-page doorstopper, spent twenty weeks on the New York Times bestseller list in hardcover alone. The fact that they remained practicing Muslims (albeit the liberal, wine-guzzling kind) put their message in high international demand."
Author: Manil Suri

24. "Once I had thought chiefly of the man of letters, the traveler, the poet, the lover; none of that had faded, to be sure, but now for the first time I could see among all those figures, standing out with great clarity of line, the most official and yet the most hidden form of all, that of the emperor. The fact of having lived in a world which is toppling around us had taught me the importance of the Prince."
Author: Marguerite Yourcenar

25. "Tents are boasters, telling exaggerated tales of the weather they protect us from." (Emperor of Thorns)"
Author: Mark Lawrence

26. "And why did they choose to follow me? Why did you?" I asked...."I follow you because I'm tired of war. I would see it stopped. One empire. One law. It doesn't matter so much how or who, just being united would stop the madness," Makin said. "Heh, I can feel the loyalty!" I pushed up and stood, stretching. "Wouldn't the Prince of Arrow make a better emperor?" "I don't think he'll win," said Makin."
Author: Mark Lawrence

27. "During the Qin Dynasty, all books not relating to practical concernssuch as agriculture or construction were ordered burned by theemperor to guard against "dangerous thought." Whether accounts ofzombie attacks perished in the flames will never be known. Thisobscure section of a medical manuscript, preserved in the wall of anexecuted Chinese scholar, might be proof of such attacks."
Author: Max Brooks

28. "But that one single soul was emperor of the universe, no less than each of us."
Author: Michael Frayn

29. "Right there, the Jew temple of Jerusalem beneath us, I swore to myself that I would finally enter him - the boy prophet, the ultimate challenge, my obsession. I would enter him the way I entered the Emperor's gates after a campaign: invincible, majestic. But hailed by his groans rather than by the cries of banner-waving masses."
Author: Michael Schiefelbein

30. "Emperors uphold censorship, But extreme repression leads to extreme reaction. Individualists believe in freedom, But extreme expression leads to extreme reaction."
Author: Ming Dao Deng

31. "I always like to reveal the fact that the emperor has no clothes. And children are best at that. They teach us how to see the world in that sense. They are without artifice; they see it for what it is. I am drawn to that ruthless honesty."
Author: Mira Nair

32. "I suddenly wondered whether Mother might not actually be happy now, whether the sensation of happiness might not be something like faintly glittering gold sunken at the bottom of the river of sorrow. The feeling of that strange pale light when once on as exceeded all the bounds of unhappiness - if that can be called a sensation of happiness, the Emperor, my mother, and even I myself may be said to be happy now."
Author: Osamu Dazai

33. "I did notice as I walked that Amos had stayed right next to me. And Jack was close on the other side of me. And Miles was in front of us and Henry was in back of us. They were surrounding me as we walked through the crowds of kids. Like I had my own emperor's guard."
Author: R.J. Palacio

34. "The lesson I learned has been valuable to me thus far: The Emperor knows he is naked. But if you point out the fact that his wealth and power are not sufficient to clothe him, then you implicate every fool in the crowd."
Author: Rebekah Joy Anast

35. "Gio Parisi was a good-looking man,if your taste ran to dissolute Roman emperors."
Author: Rosie Genova

36. "Yes, a great library — a library as magnificent as this one — was a dangerous arsenal, one that kings and emperors feared more than the greatest army or magazine. Not a single volume from the Spanish Rooms would survive, he swore, sniffling into his cup. No, no, not a single scrap would escape this holocaust!"
Author: Ross King

37. "He wrapped himself in quotations - as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors."
Author: Rudyard Kipling

38. "Love is a flame; - we have beaconed the world's night.A city: - and we have built it, these and I.An emperor: - we have taught the world to die."
Author: Rupert Brooke

39. "We are the Sublime Radiance, the Star of India, and the Sun of Glory," said the emperor, who knew a thing or two about flattery himself, "yet we were raised in that shit-hole dump of a town where men fuck women to make babies but fuck boys to make them men- raised watching out for the attacker who worked from behind as well the warrior straight ahead... Is that how a king should be raised, Bhakti Ram Jain?" the emperor roared, tipping over the basin in his wrath. "Illiterate, ass-guarding, savage- is that what a prince should be?"
Author: Salman Rushdie

40. "When Rome burned, the emperor's cats still expected to be fed on time."
Author: Seanan McGuire

41. "In the second century A.D. the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius may have best defined pantheism when he wrote, "Everything is interwoven, and the web is holy."
Author: Sharman Apt Russell

42. "Oh, but once my memories had pulsed with the blood-heat of life. In desperation, I forced myself to recall that once, I had walked with kings and conversed in languages never heard in this land. Once I had stood at the prow of a Sea Wolf ship and sailed oceans unknown to seamen here. I had ridden horses through desert lands, and dined on exotic foods in Arab tents. I had roamed Constantinople's fabled streets, and bowed before the Holy Roman Emperor's throne. I had been a slave, a spy, a sailor. Advisor and confidant of lords, I had served Arabs, Byzantines, and barbarians. I had worn captive's rags, and the silken robes of a Sarazen prince. Once I had held a jeweled knife and taken a life with my own hand. Yes, and once I had held a loving woman in my arms and kissed her warm and willing lips...Death would have been far, far better than the gnawing, aching emptiness that was now my life."
Author: Stephen R. Lawhead

43. "Great ambition without contribution is without significance. The Emperor's Club"
Author: Steve William Laible

44. "The clothes have no emperor."
Author: Stewart Elliott Guthrie

45. "Think of it. Fifteen whole years-no small part of a mans life.-taken from us-all the most energetic have fallen to the cruelty of the emperor. And the few that survive are no longer what we once were. Yet I find some small satisfaction in acknowledging the bondage we once suffered. Tacitus, The Agricola"
Author: Tacitus

46. "[About the wives of Weinsburg] They may only be a legend. I like to think they were real. Once the city of Weinsburg in Germany was under siege. The enemy emperor was dangerous but not unmerciful. When it became inevitable that the city would fall, the men of Weinsberg pleaded for their women, that they be allowed to flee with their lives. The emperor relented and allowed the women to leave the city with only the valuables they could carry on their backs. The day came and the gates of the city opened and the emperor watched in shock as the women stumbled through the gates nearly breaking under the weight of their husbands and fathers who they carried on their backs. Their love humbled the emperor and he declared all would be spared. ~ Nora"
Author: Tiffany Reisz

47. "The fear of the violent and the lawless is no less a tyranny than the edicts that come from the Emperor's throne."
Author: Timothy Zahn

48. "For centuries, as pope and emperor tore each other apart in their quarrels over power, the excluded went on living on the fringe, like lepers, of whom true lepers are only the illustration ordained by God to make us understand this wondrous parable, so that in saying 'lepers' we would understand 'outcast, poor, simple, excluded, uprooted from the countryside, humiliated in the cities.' But we did not understand; the mystery of leprosy has continued to haunt us because we have not recognized the nature of the sign."
Author: Umberto Eco

49. "At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flitFlames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,Where blood-begotten spirits comeAnd all complexities of fury leave,Dying into a dance,An agony of trance,An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve."
Author: W.B. Yeats

50. "So in process of four or five years the emperor called me, as divers times he had done before."
Author: William Adams

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