“Oh, when shall English men
With such acts fill a pen,
Or England breed again
Such a King Harry?”
Source: To the Cambro-Britons and Their Harp, his Ballad of Agincourt (1627), Lines 117-120.
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Michael Drayton 10
English poet 1563–1631Related quotes
“BALTHAZAR: Subjects may stumble, when kings walk astray.
Thine acts shall be a new Apocrypha.”
The Noble Spanish Soldier (1622)
Source: "Chinese writer finds freedom in English" in Reuters https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-literature-yan-interview/chinese-writer-finds-freedom-in-english-idUSTRE53M00D20090423 (22 April 2009)
Speech to the Royal Society of St George (22 April 1961), quoted in A Nation Not Afraid. The Thinking of Enoch Powell (1965), pp. 145–146
“Old men must die, or the world would grow mouldy, would only breed the past again.”
Becket, Prologue, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“He seems to have declared war on the King’s English as well as on the English king.”
Source: His Last Bow: 8 Stories
“My song shall spread where ever there are men,
If wit and art will so much guide my pen.”
Cantando espalharei por toda parte,
Se a tanto me ajudar o engenho e arte.
Stanza 2, lines 7–8 (tr. Richard Fanshawe, 1655)
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto I
“In that day there shall be neither kings nor Americans — only Men; over the whole earth, MEN.”
Anarchism & American Traditions (1908)
Context: As to the American tradition of non-meddling, Anarchism asks that it be carried down to the individual himself. It demands no jealous barrier of isolation; it knows that such isolation is undesirable and impossible; but it teaches that by all men's strictly minding their own business, a fluid society, freely adapting itself to mutual needs, wherein all the world shall belong to all men, as much as each has need or desire, will result.
And when Modern Revolution has thus been carried to the heart of the whole world — if it ever shall be, as I hope it will — then may we hope to see a resurrection of that proud spirit of our fathers which put the simple dignity of Man above the gauds of wealth and class, and held that to be an American was greater than to be a king.
In that day there shall be neither kings nor Americans — only Men; over the whole earth, MEN.
The Paris Review interview (1982)
Context: She doesn’t hold back anything from them. When they beg her not to depart, she reminds them that nothing lasts forever. She’s as truthful as the nursery rhymes. Remember that all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty-Dumpty together again. There’s such a tremendous truth in that. It goes into children in some part of them that they don’t know, and indeed perhaps we don’t know. But eventually they realize — and that’s the great truth.
Letter to his admirals (18 August 1336), quoted in Ian Mortimer, The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation (Vintage, 2008), p. 130