The world needed gentle men to rule if the people were to live in peace, not the warmongers and conniving men she so often witnessed wearing the crimson of the Imperial Council.

Men of honour will always outstay men of undeserved rank.

Those who looked with revulsion at the oppressive might of her arms, were obliged to marvel at the egalitarian nature of her social programmes.

Throughout the empire, it was whispered that although the husband waded through mud, the wife walked upon water. She, it was said, was graced with a gentle touch which tamed the most vicious of men.

Things I fear will forever change and we old souls can do little but be swayed by the winds.

Came they, in their droves, one after the other, hundred after hundred, thousand after thousand, engulfing all before them, each line a merciless wave from a boundless sea of bold men.

If they succeed, you will not be packed off to some idyllic farm, where you can write bad poetry, we will both be executed.

Power is a beautiful thing.

What had, moments ago, appeared a dangerous gambit, now seemed an elegant coup de maître.

History will remember him as a savage, but that's because we write the histories.

There is no greater service than that rendered to one’s nation, no greater glory one can seek than that in the name of one’s people.

A spider is slow, but its web catches the fastest flies.

To err is human - but it feels divine.

I spent most of my life from 24 to 31 at the office. I wasn't going to people's weddings I wasn't cultivating my marriage. I wasn't happy.

Philosophy itself cannot but benefit from our disputes, for if our conceptions prove true, new achievements will be made; if false, their refutation will further confirm the original doctrines.

Meat-eating is condemned by the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Sravakas; if one devours meat out of shamelessness he will always be devoid of sense.

Verses devoid of substance, melodious trifles. [Lat., Versus inopes rerum, nugaeque canorae.]

He came third in the state for woodwork,” Francesca explains. “We actually had to be proud of him for a whole week. Tough times.

I think, for me, the main thing is feeling comfortable.

Let us go forward in peace, our eyes upon heaven, the only one goal of our labors.

I do not say the mind gets informed by action, — bodily action; but it does get earnestness and strength by it, and that nameless something that gives a man the mastership of his faculties.