Quotes about Lords

Qin Shi Huang

The reason why China suffers bitterly from endless wars is because of the existence of feudal lords and kings. A reliance on ancestral temples initially brought stability, but the revival of states results in the spread of soldiers. Doing so will never bring about stability.

Note the importance placed on stability even in ancient China. This value even in the 21st Century preoccupied the Chinese government. Next to independence, it is probably the most important Chinese objective because China has seen so many periods of instability some of which killed more Chinese than the Germans did in WWII.

Robert Burns

And there begins a lang digression about the lords o' the creation.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess Salisbury

...institutions like the House of Lords must die, like all other organic beings, when their time comes.

For a conservative this is an amazing position to take because the House of Lords was and is the most conservative institution in Great Britain. However, what makes Salisbury such an effective conservative political thinker is that the mere advantage of having a House of Lords to further the conservative agenda and protect its positions does not offset the principle of having a hereditary group of people—many without merit--with no checks on them by the rest of the body politic. Conservatism ought not support aristocracy but those who have achieved by merit.

Gena Showalter

THE WOMAN WAS GOING TO KILL HIM, and not because she was stronger and more vicious than he was. Which, if he thought about it, she was. He’d never ripped a man’s throat out with his teeth, and he was damned impressed that Gwen had. She’d made the Lords of the Underworld look like marshmallows.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

That mob of peers [House of Lords] did really represent the English people—that is to say, it was honest, ignorant, vaguely excited, almost unanimous, and obviously wrong.

Arab Proverb

Call someone your lord and he'll sell you in the slave market.

Christopher Monckton

Nothing surprises me about the Lords.

Richard Dawkins

Bishops sit in the House of Lords automatically.

Zhuangzi

If the Tao could be served up, everyone would serve it up to their lords. If the Tao could be offered, there is no one who would not offer it to their parents. If the Tao could be spoken of, there is no one in the world who would not speak of it to their brothers and sisters. if the Tao could be passed on, there is no one who would not pass it on to their heirs. However, it obviously cannot be so and the reason is as follows. If there is no true centre within to receive it, it cannot remain;if there is no true direction outside to guide it,it cannot be received.

Walter Bagehot

The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.

Charles Sumner

Slavery is a conspiracy of the lords of the loom and the lords of the lash.

The “lords of the lash” were the Southern slave owners. The “lords of the loom” were the Northern mill owners. The Southern cotton, grown by cheap slave labor was sold to the Northern mill owners at very low prices. They in turn wove the cotton into cloth and sold it throughout the nation and to foreign countries. So, although there was strong Northern anti-slavery sentiment, the wealthy and politically powerful mill owners had a vested interest in maintaining slavery in the South.

Ho Xuan Huong

Before the [Buddhist] priests are big trays of delicacies, Behind them lurk graceful nuns. … Kings and Lords only love that little thing

The poem goes on to make sexual innuendoes of various types and ends with the line: The Vietnamese society at the time was sexually quite straight-laced for ordinary people, but not so, amongst the power elites.

Lao Tzu

There are no words which men detest more than "solitary," "desolate," and "hapless." Yet Lords and Princes use them to describe themselves.

Leigh Hunt

We are slumberous poppies,
Lords of Lethe downs,
Some awake and some asleep,
Sleeping in our crowns.
What perchance our dreams may know,
Let our serious may know.

Arthur Young

I sincerely regret the loss of that set of men who are called yeomen ... who really kept up the independence of the nation, and I am loth to see their lands now in the hands of monopolizing lords.

At the time the number of small, independent land owners was diminishing.

Jacob Rees-Mogg

It has never been the case that a peerage can be extinguished, even for the lifetime of a peer, by a motion of the Lords. This does not mean that there are not effective ways of penalising errant peers.

Yoshida Shoin

As things stand now the feudal lords are content to look on while the Shogunate carries on in a highhanded manner. Neither the lords nor the Shogun can be depended upon, and so our only hope lies in grass-roots heroes.

He was executed for rebellion at age 29. However, a number of his followers went on to leadership positions in the reforms that followed. The Shogun was the military ruler of the country subject only to the Emperor. In the logic of Japan at the time one could call for revolution against the Shogun and not be disloyal to the Emperor.

Lords Quotes