Claudius Quotes

“I was thinking, "So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I'll be able to make people read my books now.”
― Robert Graves, I, Claudius

“But godhead is, after all, a matter of fact, not a matter of opinion: if a man is generally worshipped as a god then he is a god. And if a god ceases to be worshipped he is nothing.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

“The Roman Road is the greatest monument ever raised to human liberty by a noble and generous people. It runs across mountain, marsh and river. It is built broad, straight and firm. It joins city with city and nation with nation. It is tens of thousands of miles long, and always thronged with grateful travellers. And while the Great Pyramid, a few hundred feet high and wide, awes sight-seers to silence—though it is only the rifled tomb of an ignoble corpse and a monument of oppression and misery, so that no doubt in viewing it you may still seem to hear the crack of the taskmaster's whip and the squeals and groans of the poor workmen struggling to set a huge block of stone into position——”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

“On occasions of this sort it was, I must admit, very pleasurable to be a monarch: to be able to get important things done by smothering stupid opposition with a single authoritative word.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

“Nobody believed he was really quite born” - a proverb for a nobody (referring to Claudius)”
― Seneca, Apocolocyntosis

“A little more than kin, and less than kind!”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Seems,' madam? Nay, it is. I know not 'seems'. 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, nor customary suits of solemn black, nor windy suspiration of forced breath, no, nor the fruitful river in the eye, nor the dejected 'haviour of the visage, together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, that can denote me truly. These indeed 'seem'; for they are actions that a man might play. But I have that within which passes show - these but the trappings and the suits of woe.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“This business is well ended.
My liege and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night night, and time is time,
Were nothing but to waste night, day and time.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief. Your son is mad. Mad I call it.
For, to define true madness,
What is't but to be nothing else but mad?
But let that go.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“One speech in't I chiefly loved.
T'was Aeneas' tale to Dido; and thereabout of it especially when he speaks of Priam's slaughter.
If it live in your memory, begin at this line”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“What should a man do but be merry?
For look you how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within's two hours.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“give order that these bodies
High on a stage by placed to the view.
And let me speak to the unknowing world
How these things came about. So shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgements, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fallen on th'inventors' heads. All this can I
Truly deliver.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“And I learned this phrase off by heart and constantly made it my salvation. I used to throw up my hands, shut my eyes, and declaim: ‘Words fail me, my Lords. Nothing that I might utter could possibly match the depth of my feelings in this matter.’ Then I would pause for a few seconds and recover the thread of my argument.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina