Lords Quotes

The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe - responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages. (Tom Stoppard)
Time passed by. I had furnished steam hammers to the principal foundries in England. I had sent them abroad, even to Russia. At length it became known to the Lords of the Admiralty that a new power in forging had been introduced. View quote
James Nasmyth
This man Chesterfield, I thought, had been a Lord among wits but I find he is only a wit among Lords. View quote
Samuel Johnson
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay; Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroyed, can never be supplied. View quote
Oliver Goldsmith
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the lords of humankind pass by. View quote
Oliver Goldsmith
There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords. View quote
John Muir
A man may speak very well in the House of Commons, and fail very completely in the House of Lords. There are two distinct styles requisite: I intend, in the course of my career, if I have time, to give a specimen of both. View quote
Benjamin Disraeli
Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay ye low? View quote
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The monk, the inquisitor, and the Jesuit were lords of Spain,- sovereigns of her sovereign, for they had formed the dark and narrow mind of that tyrannical recluse. They had formed the minds of her people, quenched in blood every spark of rising heresy, and given over a noble nation to a bigotry blind and inexorable as the doom of fate. Linked with pride, ambition, avarice, every passion of a rich, strong nature, potent for good and ill, it made the Spaniard of that day a scourge as dire as ever fell on man. View quote
Francis Parkman
He only is advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into Living peace. And the men who have this life in them are the true lords or kings of the earth - they, and they only. View quote
John Ruskin
America may not realize it yet, but Latin prototypes are being created right now, and not just by me. They are these mambo kings and salsa queens, Aztec lords and Inca princesses, every Hernandez and Fernandez, whom this country will one day come to understand and respect. (John Leguizamo)
During the last 100 years, the House of Lords has never contributed one iota to popular liberties or popular freedom, or done anything to advance the common weal; but during that time it has protected every abuse and sheltered every privilege. View quote
Joseph Chamberlain
The House of Lords must go - not be reformed, not be replaced, not be reborn in some nominated life-after-death patronage paradise, just closed down, abolished, finished. View quote
Neil Kinnock
When we have a majority we will do it. I think the days of the Lords are quite genuinely numbered. View quote
Tony Benn
We have been in recess since July, and during that time there have been a fuel crisis, a Danish no vote, the collapse of the Euro and a war in the middle east, but what is our business tomorrow? The Insolvency Bill [Lords]. It ought be called the Bankruptcy Bill [Commons], because we play no role. View quote
Tony Benn
Anyone from abroad will tell you that it is the class system that really lies at the root of our problems, economic and industrial. The House of Lords symbolises that. View quote
Tony Benn
In my mind, he was guilty of no error, he was chargeable with no exaggeration, he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said, that all we see about us, Kings, Lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve good men into a box. View quote
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
The Law is the true embodiment Of everything that's excellent. It has no kind of fault or flaw, And I, my Lords, embody the Law. View quote
W. S. Gilbert
A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it. View quote
Walter Bagehot
Great families of yesterday we show, And lords, whose parents were the Lord knows who. View quote
Daniel Defoe
Wealth, howsoever got, in England makes lords of mechanics, gentlemen of rakes; Antiquity and birth are needless here; 'Tis impudence and money makes a peer. (Daniel Defoe)
As things stand now the feudal lords are content to look on while the shogunate carries on in a highhanded manner. Neither the lords nor the shogun can be depended upon, and so our only hope lies in grass-roots heroes. View quote
Yoshida Shoin
Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day. View quote
Charles Dickens
From scenes like these, old Scotia's grandeur springs, That makes her loved at home, revered abroad: Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, "An honest man's the noblest work of God." View quote
Robert Burns
An' there began a lang digression About the lords o' the creation. View quote
Robert Burns