“An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king”

English in 1819 http://www.readprint.com/work-1361/Percy-Bysshe-Shelley (1819), l. 1
Context: An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, —
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn, — mud from a muddy spring, —
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king" by Percy Bysshe Shelley?
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley 246
English Romantic poet 1792–1822

Related quotes

Nicolas Chamfort photo

“Despising money is like toppling a king off his throne.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

Il y a une sorte de plaisir attaché au courage qui se met au-dessus de la fortune. Mépriser l'argent, c'est détrôner un Roi. Il y a du ragoût.
Maximes et Pensées, #142
Reflections

Alan Moore photo

“I’ve known a lot of people go mad over the years, and it is more distressing than people dying. People dying is quite natural, people going mad is the complete antithesis of that.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: I’ve known a lot of people go mad over the years, and it is more distressing than people dying. People dying is quite natural, people going mad is the complete antithesis of that.

“In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

Source: Gem of the Ocean

Guy De Maupassant photo
Niccolo Machiavelli photo

“In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.”

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Italian politician, Writer and Author

In terra di ciechi chi vi ha un occhio è signore.
Act III, scene ix
The Mandrake (1524)

Desiderius Erasmus photo

“In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.”
In regione caecorum rex est luscus.

Adagia (first published 1500, with numerous expanded editions through 1536), III, IV, 96
Also in the same passage of the Adagia is a variant: Inter caecos regnat strabus (Among the blind, the squinter rules).

Emily Dickinson photo

“A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King.”

1333: A little Madness in the Spring
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1960)

George Herbert photo

“465. In the kingdome of blind men the one-ey'd is king.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo

“Authority forgets a dying king,
Laid widow’d of the power in his eye
That bow’d the will.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

Source: Morte D'Arthur (1842), Lines 121-123

“In the country of the blind, who are not as unobservant as they look, the one-eyed is not king, he is spectator.”

Clifford Geertz (1926–2006) American anthropologist

Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (1983) Basic Books, 2000, p. 58.

Related topics