Elizabeth I Quotes

[On being told Mary, Queen of Scots, was taller than she:] Then she is too high, for I myself am neither too high nor too low.

The name of a successor is like the tolling of my own death-bell!

If I should say the sweetest speech with the eloquentest tongue that ever was in man, I were not able to express that restless care which I have ever bent to govern for the greatest wealth.

Perhaps life is like an hour glass, with dear ones the sand that slips from the upper glass--the earth--into the second--eternity.

It has been always held for a special principle in friendship that prosperity provideth but adversity proveth friends.

I will never be by violence constrained to do anything.

The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy.

The word must is not to be used to princes.

... [ellipsis in source] it is true that the world was made in six days, but it was by God, to whose power the infirmity of men isnot to be compared.

If our web be framed with rotten handles, when our loom is well nigh done, our work is new to begin. God send the weaver true prentices again, and let them be denizens.

The end crowneth the work.

we Princes are set as it were upon stages, in the sight and view of all the world. The least spot is soon spied in our garments, a blemish quickly noticed in our doings.

Hang Irish harpers wherever found.

The past can not be cured.

I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.

...early medieval Ireland sounds like a somewhat crazed Wisconsin, in which every dairy farm is an armed camp at perpetual war with its neighbors, and every farmer claims he is a king.

Like her father, Bess never forgot a hurt or a service.

Like her father, Bess never forgot a hurt of a service.

Pain was the only sign to her that she was alive and could feel emotion.

Prosperity provideth but adversity proveth friends.

Cowards falter but danger is often overcome by those who nobly dare.

I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman but I have the heart and stomach of a King and of a King of England too.

I do not want a husband who honours me as a queen, if he does not love me as a woman.

My mortal foe can no ways wish me a greater harm than England's hate neither should death be less welcome unto me than such a mishap betide me.