Retinue Quotes & Sayings

The universe is the externisation of the soul. Wherever the life is, that bursts into appearance around it. Our science is sensual, and therefore superficial. The earth, and the heavenly bodies, physics, and chemistry, we sensually treat, as if they were self-existent; but these are the retinue of that Being we have. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a deeper pleasure in following truth to the scaffold or the cross, than in joining the multitudinous retinue, and mingling our shouts with theirs, when victorious error celebrates its triumphs. — Horace Mann

Aye, then. Come and dance with the Ech'lon. You can be me bloody retinue. King o' Fools and 'is merry band o' jesters. If they don't laugh us out o' the tower, it'll be a bleedin' miracle. — Bec McMaster

All I'd heard about, really, was how fine and clean Buddy was and how he was the kind of person a girl should stay fine and clean for. So I didn't really see the harm in anything Buddy would think up to do. — Sylvia Plath

I stayed only two days in the capital. I was welcomed by a cheering citizenry, who threw flowers at my head. It was disconcerting to think I could have put almost any young man in my retinue on a white horse and they would have thrown flowers at him instead. It was not me they cared about, only what I meant to them: a cessation of hostilities, a chance for prosperity, food on the table. — Megan Whalen Turner

[W]e talk about the tyranny of words, but we like to tyrannise over them too; we are fond of having a large superfluous establishment of words to wait upon us on great occasions; we think it looks important, and sounds well. As we are not particular about the meaning of our liveries on state occassions, if they be but fine and numerous enough, so, the meaning or necessity of our words is a secondary consideration, if there be but a great parade of them. And as individuals get into trouble by making too great a show of liveries, or as slaves when they are too numerous rise against their masters, so I think I could mention a nation that has got into many great difficulties, and will get into many greater, from maintaining too large a retinue of words. — Charles Dickens

retinue to the city for the tourney on Prince Joffrey's — George R R Martin

The boss is never your friend, even if you're sleeping with him. — Jacob M. Appel

I shall sit down,' replied the cat, sitting down, 'but I shall enter an objection with regard to your last. My speeches in no way resemble verbal muck, as you have been pleased to put it in the presence of a lady, but rather a sequence of tightly packed syllogisms, the merit of which would be appreciated by such connoisseurs as Sextus Empiricus, Martianus Capella, and, for all I know, Aristotle himself.'
Your king is in check,' said Woland.
Very well, very well,' responded the cat, and he began studying the chessboard through his opera glasses.
And so, donna,' Woland addressed Margarita, 'I present to you my retinue. This one who is playing the fool is the cat Behemoth ... — Mikhail Bulgakov

Bohemia is nothing more than the little country in which you do not live. If you try to obtain citizenship in it, at once the court and retinue pack the royal archives and treasure and move away beyond the hills. — O. Henry

There is someone warming up in the Giants' bullpen, but he's obscured by his number. — Jerry Coleman

Embrace the lows so that you can more effectively enjoy the highs. Love the fight. Love it so much, and let it save you when your emotional muscles have become soft. — Tarryn Fisher

R," Elizabeth breathed. "For what? Rheumatism? Retinue? Richard the Third?"
The planchette continued to move, torward the O.
"Romantic? It's going to tell us our husband's name! Or else ... rotund." She paused. "Is it calling us fat?"
W.
"Someone's going to have a row? — Alyxandra Harvey

One day [the prince] lost sight of his retinue in a great forest. These forests are very useful in delivering princes from their courtiers, like a sieve that keeps back the bran. Then the princes get away to follow their fortunes. In this they have the advantage of the princesses, who are forced to marry before they have had a bit of fun. I wish our princesses got lost in a forest sometimes. — George MacDonald

The common people are but ill judges of a man's merits; they are slaves to fame, and their eyes are dazzled with the pomp of titles and large retinue. No wonder, then, that they bestow their honors on those who least deserve them. — Horace

In the midst of a thick forest, there was a castle that gave shelter to all travelers overtaken by night on their journey: lords and ladies, royalty and their retinue, humble wayfarers. — Italo Calvino

There is a point of view among astronomical researchers that is generally referred to as the Principle of Mediocrity ... If the Sun and its retinue of worlds is only one system among many, then many other systems will be like ours: home to life. Indeed, to the extent that this is true, we should be prepared for the possibility that, even in the Milky Way galaxy, billions of planets may be carpeted by the dirty, nasty business known as life. — Seth Shostak

The retinue of a grandee in China or Indostan accordingly is, by all accounts, much more numerous and splendid than that of the richest subjects of Europe. — Adam Smith

Mysteries are not necessarily miracles. — Timothy Ferriss

From the body of the unborn essence arises the sphere of light, and from that sphere of light arises wisdom. From the wisdom arises the seed syllable and from the seed syllable arises the complete Mandala, the deity and the retinue. — Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

Music is one of the highest art forms there is. It can define a life, change a life, or even safe a life, in just three short minutes. — Alyson Noel

The person in the I'M OK - YOU'RE NOT OK position suffers from stroking deprivation. A stroke is only as good as the stroker. And there are no OK people. Therefore there are no OK strokes. Such a person may develop a retinue of "yes men" who praise and stroke him heavily. Yet he knows they are not authentic strokes because he has had to set them up himself, in the same way he had to produce his own stroking in the first place. The more they praise him the more despicable they become, until he finally rejects them all in favor of a new group of yes men. "Come close so I can let you have it" is an old recording. That's the way it was in the beginning. — Thomas A. Harris

It would scarcely be destruction," he replied gently. "Let us call it iconoclasm, the swallowing of formulas, which has always had its full retinue of idealists. And you do not want a Napoleon . All that is needed is direction, which could be given by men of far lower gifts than a Bonaparte. In a word, you want a Power-House, and then the age of miracles will begin. — John Buchan

If you will librate people from there fake rituals, they will become your retinue. — Ayush Pratap

Bint-Anath was approaching, her many-pleated, floor-length sheath floating scarlet around her, her slim shoulders visible under a billowing white flounced cloak, and the long black ringlets of her wig already glistening with melted wax ... She was like a goddess, like Hathor herself, moving lightly in the circle of reverence the guests had provided, her pair of massive Shardana guards towering beside her and her exquisitely gowned and painted retinue behind. — Pauline Gedge

I find increasingly that the more extreme are the things going on in your life, the more cultural reference points fail you. More mythical reference points actually help, and you realise that's what myths are for. It's for human beings to process their experience in extremis. — Michael Sheen

First was a lone cyclist, in a red jersey, toiling intent and confident out of the westering sun, passing to the melody of a high chattering cheer. Then three together in a harlequinade of faded colour, legs caked yellow with dust and sweat, faces expressionless, eyes heavy and endlessly tired.
Tommy faced Dick, saying: 'I think Nicole wants a divorce - I suppose you'll make no obstacles?'
A troupe of fifty more swarmed after the first bicycle racers, strung out over two hundred yards; a few were smiling and self-conscious, a few obviously exhausted, most of them indifferent and weary. A retinue of small boys passed, a few defiant stragglers, a light truck carried the victims of accident and defeat. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Such a man deserves a retinue to attend his needs in hell. — George R R Martin

The sun and its retinue of planets drift as a group through the vast gulfs of space that separate the stars. — Barney Oliver

The band Grizzly Bear, I think they're excellent. There's a beauty and a musicality there that I wish would have been in vogue in the late '80s, when I was forming bands. — Trent Reznor

Of course, in no case would we allow the creation of a regional union in the Balkans, directed against the Soviet Union and Bulgaria. — Todor Zhivkov

My fingers are mated into a mirrored series of what manifests, to me, as the letter X. — David Foster Wallace

I don't know of any wrong road to Dictionopolis, so if this road goes to Dictionopolis at all it must be the right road, and if it doesn't it must be the right road to somewhere else, because there are no wrong roads to anywhere. Do you think it will rain? — Norton Juster

But these self-appointed teachers lack personal experience, and do not even listen when others speak to them. Relying solely on their own self-assurance, they order their brethren to wait on them like slaves. They glory in this one thing: to have many disciples. Their main objective is to ensure that, when they go about in public, their retinue of followers is no smaller than those of their rivals. They behave like mountebanks rather than teachers. They think nothing of giving orders, however burdensome, but they fail to teach others by their own conduct. Thus they make their purpose obvious to all: they have insinuated themselves into a position of leadership, not for the benefit of their disciples, but to promote their own pleasure. — Kallistos Ware

The sciences have two extremities which meet. The first is the ignorance in which men find themselves at birth. The second is that attained by great souls. They have surveyed whatever man can know, find that they know all, meet in that same ignorance whence they started. It is a clever ignorance, which knows itself. Those among them who, having emerged from the first ignorance, have been unable to achieve the other & have some smattering of this self-satisfied knowledge, pose as experts. The latter do not disturb people, are no more mistaken in their judgments on everything than others. The masses, the skilled, make up the retinue of a nation. The others, who respect it, are equally respected by it. — Comte De Lautreamont

If everyone did what they were capable of, they would astound themselves! — Marco Robinson

Far below, making their way through the swinging glass doors, a retinue of Buddhist monks entered the Shopping Center. They approached in single file, heads shaven, their robes flowing behind them like a flood of freshly squeezed Florida orange juice.

The crowd melted, parting like a biblical sea to allow them through. The guard abashedly lowered his nightstick and stepped hastily aside. And the monks, without pause or ceremony, simply mounted the escalator and rode it to the next level.
— Jeff Greenwald

But he would never join their number, never be a member of the smiling retinue of former lovers. He considered that sort of behavior rather beastly, in fact immoral. He refused to be turned from a lover into a dear friend. He was uninterested in that transition. — Julian Barnes

I'm sure there isn't an after-life. If there were, Ivor Novello would have got a message to us. — John Gielgud