A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;
An hour may lay it in the dust.
_Childe Harold, Canto II_. LORD BYRON.
Who's in or out, who moves this grand machine,
Nor stirs my curiosity nor spleen:
Secrets of state no more I wish to know
Than secret movements of a puppet show:
Let but the puppets move, I've my desire,
Unseen the hand which guides the master wire.
_Night_. C. CHURCHILL.
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state.
_Absalom and Achitophel, Pt. II_. J. DRYDEN.
And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state's decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne.
_In Memoriam, LXIII_. A. TENNYSON.
And statesmen at her council met
Who knew the seasons when to take
Occasion by the hand, and make
The bounds of freedom wider yet.
_To the Queen_. A. TENNYSON.
What should it be, that thus their faith can bind?
The power of Thought--the magic of the Mind!
Linked with success, assumed and kept with skill.
That moulds another's weakness to its will.
_The Corsair_. LORD BYRON.
'Tis thus the spirit of a single mind
Makes that of multitudes take one direction.
_Don Juan_. LORD BYRON.
For just experience tells, in every soil,
That those that think must govern those that toil.
_The Traveller_. O. GOLDSMITH.
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule.
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
And put it in his pocket!
_Hamlet, Act iii. Sc_. 4. SHAKESPEARE.
Some of their chiefs were princes of the land;
In the first rank of these did Zimri[A] stand;
A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon.
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
_Absalom and Achitophel, Pt. I_. J. DRYDEN.
[Footnote A: George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.]
For close designs and crooked councils fit;
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;
Restless, unfixed in principles and place;
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace:
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pygmy-body to decay,
And o'er informed the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity;
Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high
He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
_Absalom and Achitophel, Pt. I. (Earl of Shaftesbury.)_
J. DRYDEN.