Women From England

"Lest I offend, I hasten to explain that I have no motive to reduce Elizabeth in stature, or to diminish her vitality, if such a thing were possible. I know that her power to overawe, having first won the devotion of those personally and politically closest to her, has rarely been equalled."

"Victory over Spain was the most shining achievement of Elizabeth's reign, but by no means the only one. The repulse of the Armada had subdued religious dissension at home. Events which had swung England toward Puritanism while the Catholic danger was impending swung her back to the Anglican settlement when the peril vanished in the smoke of the burning Armada at Gravelines."

"With 1588 the crisis of the reign was past. England had emerged from the Armada year as a first-class Power. She had resisted the weight of the mightiest empire that had been seen since Roman times. Her people awoke to a consciousness of their greatness, and the last years of Elizabeth's reign saw a welling up of national energy and enthusiasm focused upon the person of the Queen. In the year following the Armada, the first three books were published of Spenser's Faerie Queene, in which Elizabeth is hymned as Gloriana. Poets and courtiers alike paid their homage to the sovereign who symbolized the great achievement. Elizabeth had schooled a generation of Englishmen."

"The greatest prince that perhaps this country ever saw."

"On Wednesday the twenty-third of March [1603] she grew speechless. That afternoone, by signes, she called for her Councill, and by putting her hand to her head, when the King of Scottes was named to succeed her, they all knew hee was the man she desired should reign after her."

"[In 1588] the Queen with a masculine Spirit came and took a View of her Army and Camp at Tilbury, and riding about through the Ranks of Armed men drawn up on both sides her, with a Leader's Truncheon in her Hand, sometimes with a martial Pace, another while gently like a Woman, incredible it is how much she encouraged the Hearts of her Captains and Soldiers by her Presence and Speech to them."

"[T]he Memory of that Princess (which amongst English-men ought ever to be gratefull and sacred)."

"The wisest woman that ever was; for she understood the interests and dispositions of all the princes in her time, and was so perfect in the knowledge of her own realm, that no counsellor could tell her anything she did not know before."

"[Elizabeth is] descended by father and mother of mere English blood, and not of Spain, as her sister was."

"Remember and consider that this very day...eighty-two years sithence began a new resurrection of this kingdom from the dead, our second happy reformation of religion by the auspicious entrance of our late royal Deborah (worthy of eternal remembrance and honour) into her blessed and glorious reign."

"Elizabeth, unlike Mary, born of both an English mother and an English father, seems to have felt real affection for her people. Certainly, she had the common touch, frequently going out amongst them on summer-long cross-country progresses, or being carried in an open chair through the streets of London. At such moments Elizabeth played to the crowd, ordered "her carriage... to be taken where the crowd seemed thickest, and stood up and thanked the people.""

"Elizabeth, again like her father, learned to use the possibility of matrimony as a diplomatic trump card or, more crudely, as bait: after all, marriage to the queen of England would be a peaceful and inexpensive way for Spain or France to win that country into an alliance and, perhaps, even back to Catholicism. Throughout the first half of the reign, especially during foreign policy crisis, she entertained a steady stream of French princes and German dukes, all of whom offered undying love- and diplomatic alliance. Unlike her father, however, she knew that marriage was a card that she could only play once. Once played, her freedom of maneuver and, with it, that of her country, would be virtually eliminated. Instead, she preferred to play potential suitors against each other in a brilliant game of amorous, albeit duplicitous, diplomacy."

"Indeed, Queen Elizabeth was capable of making her Privy Council and parliaments wait an agonizingly long time while she made up her mind. In some crucial cases (marriage, what to do about Mary Queen of Scots), it could be argued that she never did so. But it could also be argued that she had been taught by hard experience the dangers of committing herself too early or too definitely. After all, Elizabeth had grown up in a perilous environment in which overt commitment to one side or the other- in politics or religion- could lead to disgrace, even death. As queen, she ruled a country which was seemingly at the mercy of bigger, more powerful neighbors. What often struck her subjects (and later male historians) as indecisiveness now looks like prudence, even a mastery of herself and of the situation at hand. In particular she was a virtuoso at playing two sides off each other, so that they would not turn against her- or England."

"If even Mary's good qualities proved to be counter-productive, Elizabeth's bad ones sometimes worked in her favor. For example, her imperious nature, quick temper, and sharp tongue did much to counter any assumptions that she was weak because she was a woman. The most common charge leveled against her, also linked to contemporary assumptions about her gender, is that she was indecisive. Thus, Robert Devereaux, earl of Essex (1565-1601), complained to the French ambassador in 1597 that "they labored under two things at this Court, delay and inconsistency, which proceeded from the sex of the queen.""

"Like her father, Henry VIII, with whom she identified publicly, she was a larger-than-life personality. As with King Hal, this makes it difficult to separate fact from fiction. This much is inarguable. Elizabeth was young when she took the throne: 25 years old. She was also good-looking- an advantage that she was not reluctant to exploit. In addition, the new queen was highly intelligent, witty, hardworking, and well educated. She was fluent in Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and, of course, English. She wrote poetry and could speak effectively when she chose to do so. Elizabeth was also, like her father, something of a scholar: she once translated Boethius' On the Consolations of Philosophy into English for her own amusement. She also took after her father in being both musical and athletic. She played the virginals (a primitive keyboard instrument), danced, and hunted with enthusiasm. A final, crucial similarity to Henry VIII was that Elizabeth I was vain and imperious. Men could flirt with her- indeed, she encouraged them- but they had to be careful not to go too far, for she never forgot that she was queen."

"Perhaps no figure in English history has inspired more myth than Queen Elizabeth I (reigned 1558-1603). She had many personas: the Virgin Queen, Gloriana, Good Queen Bess to her supporters; the bastard and heretic daughter of the whore, Anne Boleyn, to her detractors. In her day, scores of poets and artists promoted these various images. Since then, legions of writers, some scholarly, some popular, as well as playwrights and film-makers, have sought to relate the achievements of her reign and explain the mystique she exercised over her people. She herself was well aware of that mystique, cultivating it so effectively that it is almost impossible to pin down the "real" Elizabeth. Still, it is necessary to try, if only because so many of the age's triumphs and failures were intimately bound up with her words and actions."

"Greatest of all the Queen's services to England was the peace she gave her. When a divided Christendom was wracked by cruel ideological passions, within their watery bounds the English were at peace and unity. It was of this Elizabeth was most proud, and deservedly, for it was she who had saved them from the maelstrom by her diplomacy, her womanly dissimulation and cunning and, after her brief initial intervention in the religious wars of Scotland and France, her determination to spare both her people and purse from the waste, folly and destruction of war."

"With characteristic pragmatism as well as a keen eye for symbolic revenge, Elizabeth stripped lead and tin from deconsecrated Catholic churches to export to the Ottomans as munitions in their wars with the Shia Persian empire—“which the Turk buys of them,” wrote an outraged Spanish ambassador to England, “almost for its weight in gold, the tin being vitally necessary for the casting of guns and the lead for purposes of war.” The trade was so successful that it was replicated in the Barbary states of North Africa, where again English armaments were traded for gold and sugar (hence Elizabeth’s infamously bad teeth). English merchants also traveled as far as Persia, playing the Shah off against his Ottoman adversaries in a dangerous geopolitical game, aimed at neutralizing the Catholic threat of imminent Spanish invasion and keeping the ailing English economy afloat."

"Official papal policy was to excommunicate Christians trading with Muslims, but Elizabeth was now beyond such edicts. By the 1580s Elizabeth had a resident ambassador in Istanbul (then Constantinople) and consuls throughout North Africa and the Middle East, including in places like Aleppo and Raqqa. As reformed Protestants, many of them would have felt safer traveling in Muslim lands under Ottoman protection than in Catholic Europe, where arrest and the Inquisition invariably awaited them."

"By the late 1570s, Elizabeth had developed an amicable correspondence with the Ottoman sultan Murad III, advising him that they both hated those idolatrous Catholics, and that she would be happy to act as his subject in return for a political and commercial alliance. Murad was rather perplexed—as we know from his advisers’ writings—to hear from a female ruler of a tiny country on the edge of Europe that he’d never heard of."

"A warm concern for the interest and honour of the nation, a tenderness for her people, and a confidence in their affections, were appearances that ran through her whole public conduct, and gave life and colour to it. She did great things, and she knew how to set them off according to their full value, by her manner of doing them."

"Mother brings a child late to contact by half-an-hour; father then requires an extra half-hour the next week. This is getting silly. If, in fact, the father does not see the child at all, of course he should see the child on another occasion, but there are fathers who actually add up the minutes and produce it and say "Now I should have so much more contact because I lost five minutes last week and ten minutes the week before"."

"What a beautiful step! I shall never be able to do it."

"The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous."

"Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike."

"I need to have a purpose in life and for that I might sacrifice some of the luxuries that I enjoy; fortunately I am fairly adaptable. I try to be aware, flexible and unbiased in my thinking. If I have learnt anything, it is that life forms no logical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return?"

"How to put something so visual, so potent with theatrical moment that even film cannot capture it, into plain words? How to explain why it is that when, to a particular strain of music, an ordinary mortal steps forward on one leg, raises the other behind her and lifts her arms above her head, the angels hold their breath?"

"Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable."

"Minor things can become moments of great revelation when encountered for the very first time."

"In times when nothing stood but worsened, or grew strange, there was one constant good: she did not change."

"Remarkably, a year that has necessarily kept people apart has, in many ways, brought us closer. Across the Commonwealth, my family and I have been inspired by stories of people volunteering in their communities, helping those in need. In the United Kingdom and around the world, people have risen magnificently to the challenges of the year, and I am so proud and moved by this quiet, indomitable spirit. To our young people in particular I say thank you for the part you have played. This year, we celebrated International Nurses’ Day, on the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale. As with other nursing pioneers like Mary Seacole, Florence Nightingale shone a lamp of hope across the world. Today, our front-line services still shine that lamp for us — supported by the amazing achievements of modern science — and we owe them a debt of gratitude. We continue to be inspired by the kindness of strangers and draw comfort that — even on the darkest nights — there is hope in the new dawn."

"Today it may seem hard that we cannot mark this special anniversary as we would wish. Instead we remember from our homes and our doorsteps. But our streets are not empty; they are filled with the love and the care that we have for each other. And when I look at our country today, and see what we are willing to do to protect and support one another, I say with pride that we are still a nation those brave soldiers, sailors and airmen would recognise and admire."

"I hope in the years to come everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge. And those who come after us will say the Britons of this generation were as strong as any. That the attributes of self-discipline, of quiet good-humoured resolve and of fellow-feeling still characterise this country. The pride in who we are is not a part of our past, it defines our present and our future."

"The true measure of all our actions is how long the good in them lasts...everything we do, we do for the young."

"Our peace and prosperity can never be taken for granted and must constantly be tended, so that never again do we have cause to build monuments to our fallen youth."

"Our religions provide critical guidance for the way we live our lives, and for the way in which we treat each other."

"The concept of our established Church is occasionally misunderstood and, I believe, commonly under-appreciated. Its role is not to defend Anglicanism to the exclusion of other religions. Instead, the Church has a duty to protect the free practice of all faiths in this country."

"The right to change the government by the ballot box and not the barrel of a gun; perhaps the best definition of a democracy."

"A Uachtaráin agus a chairde"

"In tomorrow's world we must all work together as hard as ever, if we're truly to be United Nations"

"Football's a difficult business and aren't they prima donnas?"

"Discrimination still exists. Some people feel that their own beliefs are being threatened. Some are unhappy about unfamiliar cultures. They all need to be reassured that there is so much to be gained by reaching out to others; that diversity is indeed a strength and not a threat."

"Since I have landed in Quebec, I think we can say that I am Canadian."

"Oh, dear, I hope it wasn't anyone important."

"But nothing that can be said can begin to take away the anguish and the pain of these moments. Grief is the price we pay for love."

"We are a moderate, pragmatic people, more comfortable with practice than theory."

"Although we must leave you, Fair Castle of Mey, We shall never forget, Nor will never repay, A meal of such splendour, Repast of such zest, It will take us to Sunday, Just to digest. To leafy Balmoral, We are now on our way, But our hearts will remain At the Castle of Mey. With your gardens and ranges, And all your good cheer, We will be back again soon So roll on next year."

"1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an Annus Horribilis."

"On behalf of the British people I salute the skill and courage which have brought man to the moon. May this endeavour increase the knowledge and well-being of mankind."

"Today we need a special kind of courage. Not the kind needed in battle, but a kind which makes us stand up for everything that we know is right, everything that is true and honest. We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics, so that we can show the world that we are not afraid of the future."