A Quote by Henry David Thoreau

Genius is not a retainer to any emperor.

Henry David Thoreau

Quote Topics

Any Emperor Genius Retainer

Quote Author

Henry David Thoreau
American - Author
July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862

New York was fun as a kid. I loved to go walking. It was an adventure. I remember throwing my retainer into a garbage can one time and my mom yelling, "Get your ass over here now!" And I had to dig through the garbage and find my retainer.

Liv Tyler

The emperor is naked!" The parade stopped. The emperor paused. A hush fell over the crowd, until one quick-thinking peasant shouted: "No, he isn't. The emperor is merely endorsing a clothing-optional lifestyle!

James Finn Garner

In our own times, you see, an emperor came to the city of Rome, where there's the temple of an emperor, where there's a fisherman's tomb. And so that pious and Christian emperor, wishing to beg for health, for salvation from the Lord, did not proceed to the temple of a proud emperor, but to the tomb of a fisherman, where he could imitate that fisherman in humility, so that he, being thus approached, might then obtain something from the Lord, which a haughty emperor would be quite unable to earn.

Saint Augustine

Now that the Emperor has accepted the Potsdam Declaration, we must lay down our arms. Obeying the Emperor's order, we shall not fight. We must keep peace and order and we shall not make any trouble.

Seishiro Itagaki

An emperor in his nightcap will not meet with half the respect of an emperor with a crown.

Oliver Goldsmith

Universality is the distinguishing mark of genius. There is no such thing as a special genius, a genius for mathematics, or for music, or even for chess, but only a universal genius. The genius is a man who knows everything without having learned it.

Otto Weininger

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.

Neil Gaiman

The emperor would prefer the poet to keep away from politics, the emperor's domain, so that he can manage things the way he likes.

Chinua Achebe

The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

Wallace Stevens

I am the emperor of Germany, but you are the emperor of chefs.

Wilhelm II

Genius? Nothing! Sticking to it is the genius! Any other bright-minded fellow can accomplish just as much if he will stick like hell and remember nothing that's any good works by itself. You've got to make the damn thing work!...I failed my way to success.

Thomas A. Edison

Genius is its own reward; for the best that one is, one must necessarily be for oneself. . . . Further, genius consists in the working of the free intellect., and as a consequence the productions of genius serve no useful purpose. The work of genius may be music, philosophy, painting, or poetry; it is nothing for use or profit. To be useless and unprofitable is one of the characteristics of genius; it is their patent of nobility.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Processions, cavalcades, and all that fund of gay frippery, furnished out by tailors, barbers, and tire-women, mechanically influence the mind into veneration; an emperor in his nightcap would not meet with half the respect of an emperor with a crown.

Oliver Goldsmith

Englands genius filled all measureOf heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,Gave to the mind its emperor,And life was larger than before:Nor sequent centuries could hitOrbit and sum of Shakespeares wit. The men who lived with him becamePoets, for the air was fame.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The enemies of Christ ... could not bear his independence; his "Give the emperor that which is the emperor's" showed a contempt for the affairs of state and its politics for the moral order that their self-respect would not let them tolerate.