80 Courtier Quotes

Following is our list of courtier quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about .

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Famous Courtier Quotes

The advertiser is the overrewarded court jester and court pander at the democratic court. — Joseph Wood Krutch

It is well-known what a middleman is: he is a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the other. — Benjamin Disraeli

Your lawyer is your true mercenary. Under his code honor consists in making the best possible fight in exchange for the biggest possible fee. He is frankly for sale to the highest bidder. — David Graham Phillips

To make a fine gentleman, several trades are required, but chiefly a barber. - Oliver Goldsmith

To make a fine gentleman, several trades are required, but chiefly a barber. — Oliver Goldsmith

Courtesy costs nothing, but buys everything. - Ali ibn Abi Talib

Courtesy costs nothing, but buys everything. — Ali ibn Abi Talib

The gentleman is generous and treats all men as his equals, especially those whom he feels to be inferior in rank and wealth. — Hilaire Belloc

A man who understands decorum and the courtesies is a great treasure; I hope to train and send into society as many such men as I can. — Mas Oyama

A rich man is one who isn't afraid to ask the salesperson to show him something cheaper. — Jack Benny

Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money. — Ambrose Bierce

Courtly manners are contagious; they are caught at Versailles. — Jean De La Bruyere

That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president. — Gore Vidal

Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron - namely, that he is a blockhead. — Ambrose Bierce

SYCOPHANT- One who approaches Greatness on his belly so that he may not be commanded to turn and be kicked. He is sometimes an editor. — Sayings

No man is a hero to his valet. This is not because the hero is no hero, but because the valet is a valet. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

No man is a hero to his valet. This is not because the hero is no hero, but because the valet is a valet. — G. W. F. Hegel

Short Courtier Quotes

  • Courtiers don't take wagers against the king's skill. There is the deadly danger of winning. — Isaac Asimov
  • Every spendthrift passion has its attendant courtiers. — Doris Lessing
  • The fawning courtier and the surly squire often mean the same thing,--each his own interest. — George Berkeley
  • The politics of courtiers resemble their shadows; they cringe and turn with the sun of the day. — Jean Antoine Petit-Senn
  • The man who bows before the ruler, shows his behind to the courtiers — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
  • Oh how unhappy is the prince served by such men who are so easily corrupted. — Francois Rabelais
  • To the courtiers flushed with wine, life was pleasure, and pleasure life. — Eiji Yoshikawa
  • Art editors and critics - people like me - have become a courtier class. — Dave Hickey
  • To be over much facetious is the accomplishment of courtiers and blemish of the wise. — Saadi Shirazi
  • Loyalty in time of need is possibly one of the noblest of victories a courtier can win over himself. — Honore de Balzac

Courtier Image Quotes

Courtship Quotes

I don’t believe in courtship.It’s a waste of time. If I love the person, I’ll tell her right away. But for you, I’ll make an exception. Just love me now, and I’ll court you forever. — Ferdinand Marcos

It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations. — Kahlil Gibran

The bedfellows politics made are never strange. It only seems that way to those who have not watched the courtship. — Marcel Achard

I think people can handle 150 to 200 miles a week. But something has to give somewhere. If he's a student, how's he going to study? He may be at the age of chasing and courtship, and that's an important form of sport and recreation, too. — Bill Bowerman

Courtship is ongoing and it is NEVER going to end. — Corey Wayne

I hate the countrie's dirt and manners, yet I love the silence; I embrace the wit; A courtship, flowing here in full tide. But loathe the expense, the vanity and pride. No place each way is happy. — William Habington

At 14 I discovered girls. At that time dancing was the only way you could put your arm around the girl. Dancing was courtship. Only later did I discover that you dance joy. You dance love. You dance dreams. — Gene Kelly

Courtship is a commitment - it's a promise not to play games with another person's heart. — Joshua Harris

This is courtship all the world over - the man all tongue; the woman all ears. — Emily Murphy

every Jack He must study the knack If he wants to make sure of his Jill! — W. S. Gilbert

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Read quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce
quotes on war, love

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Read quotes by Joseph Wood Krutch

Joseph Wood Krutch
quotes on life, education and religion

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Read quotes by Benjamin Disraeli

Benjamin Disraeli
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Read quotes by Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith
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Read quotes by Ali ibn Abi Talib

Ali ibn Abi Talib
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Read quotes by Hilaire Belloc

Hilaire Belloc
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More Courtier Quotes

When mighty roast beef was the Englishman's food It ennobled our hearts and enriched our blood-- Our soldiers were brave and our courtiers were good. Oh! the roast beef of England. And Old England's roast beef. — Henry Fielding

I find virtue to be found amongst the farmers of the country alone, not about courts, where courtiers dwell. — Andrew Jackson

A rule that may serve for a statesman, a courtier, or a lovernever make a defence or an apology before you be accused. — Charles I of England

Peoples, be peoples and others will respect you. Be courtiers and others will scorn you and it will be well deserved. — Louis-Joseph Papineau

The wicked can have only accomplices, the voluptuous have companions in debauchery, self-seekers have associates, the politic assemble the factions, the typical idler has connections, princes have courtiers. Only the virtuous have friends. — Voltaire

I would not be a rose upon the wall A queen might stop at, near the palace-door, To say to a courtier, "Pluck that rose for me, It's prettier than the rest." O Romney Leigh! I'd rather far be trodden by his foot, Than lie in a great queen's bosom. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Practise in everything a certain nonchalance that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort and almost without thought. — Baldassare Castiglione

In the common words we use every day, souls of past races, the thoughts and feelings of individual men stand around us, not dead, but frozen into their attitudes like the courtiers in the garden of the Sleeping Beauty. — Owen Barfield

The Westerly Wind asserting his sway from the south-west quarter is often like a monarch gone mad, driving forth with wild imprecations the most faithful of his courtiers to shipwreck, disaster, and death. — Joseph Conrad

Perhaps one of the only positive pieces of advice that I was ever given was that supplied by an old courtier who observed: Only two rules really count. Never miss an opportunity to relieve yourself; never miss a chance to sit down and rest your feet. — King Edward VIII

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

Dogs live with man as courtiers 'round a monarch, steeped in the flattery of his notice ... to push their favor in this world of pickings and caresses is, perhaps, the business of their lives. — Robert Louis Stevenson

...many of the officials, courtiers, and priests, representing the upper class of Egyptian society but not the royalty, looked strikingly like modern Europeans, especially long-headed ones — Carleton S. Coon

The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master's ear. It is the court fool, not the foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose. — Walter Lippmann

Greediness consists in ravishing the goods of another through violence or cunning, as in the two noble professions of the conqueror and courtier. But the merchant, like all other industrious men, seeks his benefit only in his talent, in virtue of freely arrived at agreements, and appealing to faith and the laws. — Augustin Thierry

You can smile when your heart is breaking because you are a woman, and a courtier, and a Howard. That's three reasons for being the most deceitful creature on God's earth. — Philippa Gregory

The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. — Henry David Thoreau

Ausonius must be read to be believed! As poet, no subject is too trivial for him; as courtier, no flattery too excessive. — Decimius Magnus Ausonius

In the humanist ideal, the mainstream is where interesting debate, the generating of new ideas and creativity take place. In rational society this mainstream is considered uncontrollable and is therefore made marginal. The centre ground is occupied instead by structures and courtiers. — John Ralston Saul

The room was quiet, the others flicking glances at me. I ignored them. After years in Sounis's palaces being eyed with disgust by my uncle and my own father and courtier after courtier, I assure you I am unrivaled at pretending not to notice other people's glances. — Megan Whalen Turner

Here with hosts of friends I revel who can never change or chill;Though the fleeting years and seasons they are fair and faithful still!Kings and courtiers, knights and jesters, belles and beaux of far away,Meet and mingle with the beauties and the heroes of to-day.All the lore of ancient sages, all the light of souls divine,All the music, wit and wisdom of the gray old world is mine,Garnered here where fall the shadows of the mystic pineland's gloom!And I sway an airy kingdom from my little book-lined room. — Lucy Maud Montgomery

If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men's failings, and recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and voluptuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal's natural taste for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. What could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a great fortune, do but be splendid and idle? — William Makepeace Thackeray

The neo-conservatives, who are closely linked to the neo-corportists, 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. — John Ralston Saul

Swords, Lances, arrows, machine guns, and even high explosives have had far less power over the fates of nations than the typhus louse, the plague flea, and the yellow-fever mosquito. Civilizations have retreated from the plasmodium of malaria, and armies have crumbled into rabbles under the onslaught of cholera spirilla, or of dysentery and typhoid bacilli. Huge areas have bee devastated by the trypanosome that travels on the wings of the tsetse fly, and generations have been harassed by the syphilis of a courtier. War and conquest and that herd existence which is an accompaniment of what we call civilization have merely set the stage for these more powerful agents of human tragedy. — Hans Zinsser

The smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Imagine that Queen Elizabeth I, in her time, had the opportunity to give out a monopoly for playing cards within the kingdom. She knew she was going to give it to one of her courtiers. These courtiers would then all try to curry her favour. Meanwhile, they would not contribute anything to the product of the kingdom, in fact, they were wasting resources trying to secure a single prize. That, more or less, is rent seeking. — James M. Buchanan

It is depressing but not shocking to witness the liberal intelligentsia embrace Ari Shavit so enthusiastically. Shavit is someone who is as consistently wrong as Thomas Friedman on major issues, and at least as much a courtier of power. — Max Blumenthal

To serve Mary and to be her courtier is the greatest honor we can possibly possess; for to serve the Queen of Heaven is already to reign there; and to live under her command is more than to govern. — John of Damascus

What is known as success assumes nearly as many aliases as there are those who seek it. Like love, it can come to commoners as well as courtiers. Like virtue, it is its own reward. Like the Holy Grail, it seldom appears to those who don't pursue it. — Stephen Birmingham

The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men. — Henry David Thoreau

But I shall hear without pain, that I play the courtier very ill, and talk of that which I do not well understand. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am a courtier grave and serious Who is about to kiss your hand: Try to combine a pose imperious With a demeanour nobly bland. — W. S. Gilbert

All live by seeming. The beggar begs with it, and the gay courtier Gains land and title, rank and rule, by seeming; The clergy scorn it not, and the bold soldier Will eke with it his service.--All admit it, All practise it; and he who is content With showing what he is, shall have small credit In church, or camp, or state.--So wags the world. — Walter Scott

Until the end of the Middle Ages, and in many cases afterwards too, in order to obtain initiation in a trade of any sort whatever--whether that of courtier, soldier, administrator, merchant or workman--a boy did not amass the knowledge necessary to ply that trade before entering it, but threw himself into it; he then acquired the necessary knowledge. — Philippe Aries

And why does England thus persecute the votaries of her science? Why does she depress them to the level of her hewers of wood and her drawers of water? Is it because science flatters no courtier, mingles in no political strife? ... Can we behold unmoved the science of England, the vital principle of her arts, struggling for existence, the meek and unarmed victim of political strife? — David Brewster

Here and there in the ancient literature we encounter legends of wise and mysterious games that were conceived and played by scholars, monks, or the courtiers of cultured princes. These might take the form of chess games in which the pieces and squares had secret meanings in addition to their usual functions. — Hermann Hesse

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