Royalty

"I really hope I can make a difference, even in the smallest way. I am looking forward to helping as much as I can."

"I think, the people around home are very supportive to us and those are the people who really matter to us, our close friends and close family and I think if they feel you are doing the right thing you can only be true to yourself and you sort of have to ignore a lot of what's said, obviously take it on board, but you have to be yourself really and that's how I have stuck by it really."

"You can never be too rich or too thin."

"I am sure there is only one solution, that is for me to remove myself from the King's life. That is what I am doing now."

"Baldwin ruled out the traditional compromise of a morganatic marriage, the sort that Archduke Francis Ferdinand had made when he married Sophie Countess Chotek von Chotkova, whose family was not of royal blood. As Duff Cooper noted, however, the timing of events was not to the King's advantage. He waited until after his accession to the throne to raise the question of marrying Wallis Simpson. Nor did it help matters that he was stridently supported by both the Rothermere and Beaverbrook papers, to say nothing of Winston Churchill, at that time in the political wilderness."

"[A]n entirely unscrupulous woman who is not in love with the King but is exploiting him for her own purposes. She has already ruined him in money and jewels..."

"I never wanted to get married. This was all his idea. [...] I remember like yesterday the morning after we were married and I woke up and there was David [i.e., Edward VIII] standing beside the bed with this innocent smile, saying, "And now what do we do?" My heart sank. Here was someone whose every day had been arranged for him all his life and now I was the one who was going to take the place of the entire British government, trying to think up things for him to do."

"Princes that would their people should do well Must at themselves begin, as at the head; For men, by their example, pattern out Their imitations, and regard of laws: A virtuous court a world to virtue draws."

"Fallitur egregio quisquis sub principe credet Servitutem. Nunquam libertas gratior extat Quam sub rege pio."

"Princes are like to heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times; and which have much veneration, but no rest."

"Put not your trust in princes."

"Who made thee a prince and a judge over us?"

"O, how wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors! There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, More pangs and fears than wars and women have; And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again."

"A true prince is the artist of artists. […] The prince's material is the artist; his will is his chisel: he inspires, employs and directs the artist, because only he sees the whole picture from the correct perspective, because only he is the one to execute the great idea through which through which the unity of power and idea is expressed completely in the present. The regent produces an infinitely diverse spectacle, where stage and ground floor, actor and audience are one, and he himself is poet, director and hero of the play at the same time."

"In your opinion, India means its few princes. To me it means its teeming millions on whom depends the existence of its princes and our own. Kings will always use their kingly weapons. To use force is bred in them. They want to command, but those who have to obey commands do not want guns: and these are in a majority throughout the world."

"Princes appear to me to be Fools & appear to me to be fools they seem to me to be something Else besides Human Life."

"Let it not be understood that I have the slightest feeling against Henry of Prussia; it is the prince I have no use for. Personally, he may be a good fellow, and I am inclined to believe he is, and if he were in trouble and I had it in my power to help he would find in me a friend. The amputation of his title would relieve him of his royal affliction and elevate him to the dignity of a man."

"The King of England is one of those princes who hath an Imperial Crown; what is that? It is not to do what he will; no, but it is that he shall not be punished in his own person if he doth that which in itself is unlawful."

"A prince, the moment he is crown'd, Inherits every virtue sound, As emblems of the sovereign power, Like other baubles in the Tower: Is generous, valiant, just, and wise, And so continues till he dies."

"They say Princes learn no art truly, but the art of horsemanship. The reason is, the brave beast is no flatterer. He will throw a Prince as soon as his groom."

"A prince without letters is a Pilot without eyes. All his government is groping."

"I am Bourbon as a matter of honour, royalist according to reason and conviction, and republican by taste and character."

"I see that God died on a gibbet eighteen hundred years ago on behalf of the Bourbon family."

"Nobles and heralds, by your leave, Here lies what once was Matthew Prior; The son of Adam and of Eve: Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher?"

"Nobody who has paid any attention to the peculiar features of our present era will doubt for a moment that we are living at a period of most wonderful transition which tends rapidly to the accomplishment that great end to which, indeed, all history points—the realization of the unity of mankind. ...The distances which separated the different nations and parts of the globe are rapidly vanishing before the achievements of modern invention, and we can traverse them with incredible ease; the languages of all nations are known, and their acquirement placed within the reach of everybody; thought is communicated with the rapidity and even by the power of lightning... The knowledge acquired becomes at once the property of all of the community at large... no sooner is a discovery or invention made, than it is already improved upon and surpassed by competing efforts: the products of all quarters of the globe are placed at our disposal, and we have only to choose which is the best and the cheapest for our purposes, and the powers of production are entrusted to the stimulus of competition and capital. ...Science discovers these laws of power, motion and transformation; industry applies them to raw matter which the earth yields us in abundance, but which becomes valuable only by knowledge."

"The production of all works in art or poetry requires, in their conception and execution, not only an exercise of the intellect, skill, and patience, but particularly a concurrent warmth of feeling and a free flow of imagination. This renders them most tender plants, which will thrive only in an atmosphere calculated to maintain that warmth, and that atmosphere is one of kindness—kindness towards the artist personally as well as towards his production. An unkind word of criticism passes like a cold blast over their tender shoots, and shrivels them up, checking the flow of the sap, which was rising to produce, perhaps, multitudes of flowers and fruit."

"I conceive it to be the duty of every educated person closely to watch and study the time in which he lives, and, as far as in him lies, to add his humble mite of individual exertion to further the accomplishment of what he believes Providence to have ordained."

"The works of art, by being publicly exhibited and offered for sale, are becoming articles of trade, following as such the unreasoning laws of markets and fashion; and public and even private patronage is swayed by their tyrannical influence."

"He revolutionised cricket. He turned it from an accomplishment into a science."

"The game, whether it is called first-class or otherwise, is CRICKET, and any measure can only be a half-measure which aims at differentiating between the classes of cricket."

"On a treacherous wicket all the batsman can do is to watch the ball with all his might and let the bat follow the eye."

"Our godly Stadtholder has come to the communion, and therein has broken the Lord’s bread, and has submitted to discipline, which is no small event."

"We need fear no more when the head is gone."

"If the Prince acted with spirit he would crush Alva; if Alva acted with spirit, he would crush the Prince."

"The Prince is a rare man, of great authoritie, universally beloved, verie wyse in resolution in all things, and voyd of pretences, and that which is worthie of speciall prayse in hym, he is not dismayed with any loss, or adversitie."

"Never did a man more weary go to eternal rest."

"There have been politicians more successful, or more subtle; there have been none more tenacious or more tolerant … He is one of that small band of statesman whose service to humanity is greater than their service to their time or their people."

"Faithless traitor, it is thou who art the cause of this massacre of our brothers!"

"The wisest, gentlest, bravest man who ever led a nation."

"Better late than never."

"Never did arrogant or indiscreet word issue from his mouth, under the impulse of anger or other passion; if any of his servants committed a fault, he was satisfied to admonish them gently without resorting to menace or to abusive language. He was master of a sweet and winning power of persuasion, by means of which he gave form to the great ideas within him, and thus he succeeded in bending to his will the other lords about the court as he chose; beloved and in high favour above all men with the people, by reason of a gracious manner that he had of saluting, and addressing in a fascinating and familiar way all whom he met."

"As long as he lived, he was the guiding star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the streets."

"People everywhere ceased to trust him, and thought that the Prince must regret that he had ever left Holland at all. He had lost all authority in the Netherlands, after allowing so many thousands to be butchered. He cannot even withdraw with honor; he is not safe even in Antwerp, where his popularity is gone."

"They welcome him as the Jews would their Messiah."

"The people here, are bewitched by the Prince; they love him, they fear him, they desire him for their lord. They inform him of everything, and take no step but by his advice. That which the Prince most abhors in the world, is your Majesty. If he could, he would drink your Majesty’s blood."

"He is the pilot who steers the ship; he alone can wreck it or save it. Peace, the Catholic religion, your Majesty’s rule, can only be established through him; we must make a virtue of necessity and come to terms with him, if we are not to lose all. I see no other way to prevent the ruin of the State but the defeat of this man, who exerts such an influence over the nation."

"O wondrous fate that joins Moses and Orange. The one fights for the law, the other beats the drum. And with his own arm, frees the Evangelium. The one leads the Hebrews through the Red Sea flood. The other guides his people through a sea … of tears and blood."

"To my mind, he builded better than he knew and the real worth of his character developed slowly."

"William the Silent, Prince of Orange, was a distinctive character, cast in a peculiar period of history. He was in thought and desire centuries ahead of the possibilities of his time, and had to contend with ideas among those he served that were as difficult to overcome as were the forces of the Spanish Crown, with which his life was spent in doing battle."

"The Prince very nobly hath travailed, both night and day, to keep this town from manslaughter and from despoil, which doubtless had taken place, if he had not been, — to the loss of 20,000 men; for that I never saw men so desperate willing to fight."