Quotes About Courtiers

The closest she had been to them was certain summer evenings when they had gone for picnics in the magravine's ice-barge -- simple family affairs, just Freya and Mama and Papa and about seventy servants and courtiers

Marriage she clearly regarded as a businesslike proposition - a matter of domestic deals and daily accounts in which emotions where as irrelevant as love songs in a resume, now, though, as the Heian courtiers had it, and find all the sensations she kept so neatly in her head, of "First love" and "True love" and even "Lost love".

Tal como dijo Aretino, «el llanto desconsolado resulta aceptable solo cuando la viuda que lo produce es dueña de un poder que influye, o más aún, es crucial en la vida de los cortesanos. Pero si quien gobierna ha perdido la mayor parte de su poder, el lamento se convierte en una queja insoportable». Lucrecia

I had forgotten the number one truth I had discovered last year in Stockholm, and which should be axiomatic for anyone having to interview or get tangled up with royal persons: it is courtiers who make royalty frightened and frightening; taken neat like whiskey they are perfectly all right. This does not mean that they are as others, but you can get on to plain terms with the species, like an ornithologist making friends with some rare wild duck.

Courtiers in some of their inscriptions referring to the king say, "I did what his ka loved" or "I did that which his ka approved

The politics of courtiers resemble their shadows; they cringe and turn with the sun of the day.

And you realized, once inside the Secret Service cordon, that the president of the United States was just a politician, surrounded by courtiers and glad-handers and people seeking favors. He was as prone to making stupid decisions as any other politician, maybe more so. The real secret about the White House was that it was so ordinary—mediocrity on steroids.

A flatterer can risk everything with great personages.

chambellans, de vieux diplomates, de vieux ministres, c'est

În lumea regilor È™i a curtenilor, nimeni nu spunea tot adev?rul, întotdeauna.

To the courtiers flushed with wine, life was pleasure, and pleasure life.

Great courtiers throughout history have mastered the science of manipulating people.

They had to serve their masters, but if they seemed to fawn, if they curried favor too obviously, the other courtiers around them would notice and would act against them.

For Chinese courtiers, the problem of how to give the emperor advice was an important issue. Over the years, thousands of them had died trying to warn or counsel their master. To be made safely, their criticisms had to be indirect—yet if they were too indirect they would not be heeded. The chronicles were their solution: Identify no one person as the source of criticism, make the advice as impersonal as possible, but let the emperor know the gravity of the situation.

Leaders of the Church have often been Narcissus, flattered and sickeningly excited by their courtiers. The court is the leprosy of the papacy.

Alexandrian courtiers took the incestuous royal marriage of Ptolemy Philadelphus ('Sibling-Loving') in their stride.

To the courtiers flushed with wine, life was pleasure, and pleasure life.

Dormidos al borde de un abismo que los cortesanos y los oportunistas cubren de flores —concluye, casi poético.

Courtiers were supposed to sound musical when they spoke, their laughter like a harp chord and their sneezes like notes on a flute

The neo-conservatives, who are closely linked to the neo-corporatists, are rather different. They claim to be conservatives, when everything they stand for is a rejection of conservatism. They claim to present an alternate social model, when they are little more than the courtiers of the corporatist movement. Their agitation is filled with the bitterness and cynicism typical of courtiers who scramble for crumbs at the banquet tables of real power, but are always denied a proper chair.

One day [the prince] lost sight of his retinue in a great forest. These forests are very useful in delivering princes from their courtiers, like a sieve that keeps back the bran. Then the princes get away to follow their fortunes. In this they have the advantage of the princesses, who are forced to marry before they have had a bit of fun. I wish our princesses got lost in a forest sometimes.

Once upon a time there was a king, and the king commissioned his favorite wizard to create a magic mirror. This mirror didn't show you your reflection. It showed you your soul—it showed you who you really were. The wizard couldn't look at it without turning away. The king couldn't look at it. The courtiers couldn't look at it. A chestful of treasure was offered to anyone who could look at it for sixty seconds without turning away. And no one could.

gossiping, backbiting courtiers, and as he closed the mahogany door behind him and the heavy brass latch clacked into place, the room erupted into a dozen scheming conversations. Power was like a magnet, keeping everything rigid and straight and proper. But without the magnet, it all collapsed into disorganized scrap.

One day he lost sight of his retinue in a great forest. These forests are very useful in delivering princes from their courtiers, like a sieve that keeps back the bran. Then the princes get away to follow their fortunes. In this way they have the advantage of the princesses, who are forced to marry before they have had a bit of fun. I wish our princesses got lost in a forest sometimes.