Elizabeth I of England Quotes (1533-1603)

“Behold affronts and indignities which the world thinks it right never to pardon, which the Son of God endures with a Divine meekness! Let us cast at the feet of Jesus that false honor, that quick sense of affronts, which exaggerates every thing, and pardons nothing, and, above all, that devilish determination in resenting injuries.”

“'Twas God the Word that spake it, He took the Bread and brake it: And what that Word did make it, That I believe and take it.”

“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; and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm.”

“It is difficult to say whether the gifts of nature or of fortune are most to be admired in that illustrious lady. The praise which Aristotle gives wholly centres in her—beauty, stature, prudence, and industry. She has just passed her sixteenth birthday, and shows such dignity and gentleness as are wonderful at her age and in her rank. Her study of true religion and learning is most energetic. Her mind has no womanly weakness, her perseverance is equal to that of a man, and her memory long keeps what it quickly picks up. She talks French and Italian as well as English: she has often talked to me readily and well in Latin, and moderately so in Greek. When she writes Greek and Latin, nothing is more beautiful than her hand-writing. She is as much delighted with music as she is skilful in the art. In adornment she is elegant rather than showy, and by her contempt of gold and head-dresses, she reminds one of Hippolyte rather than of Phsedra.”

“She is your true and natural Queen, bred, born, and brought up amongst you, and as she has naturally loved you even from the beginning of her reign, so do you most naturally, like English men, defend her, fight for her, and not only guard her with danger of your lives, but also aid her with your lands and livings, and as God has blessed you by her means with gold and silver... open your purses and bestow largely upon her now in time of war, by whom you have filled your coffers richly in time of peace... Pugnate pro patria, fight for you country, your dearest country, wherein you have been bred, born, nourished and brought up, toward which you ought to be as inwardly affected, as you are naturally moved to your mothers. It is your native soil, and therefore most sweet; for what may be dearer or sweeter than your Country?”

“This lady was endued with learning in her sex singular, and great even amongst masculine princes; whether we speak of learning, of language, or of science, modern or ancient, Divinity or Humanity: and unto the very last year of her life she was accustomed to appoint set hours for reading, scarcely any young student in a university more daily, or more duly. As for her government, I assure myself I shall not exceed, if I do affirm that this part of the island never had forty-five years of better times; and yet not through the calmness of the season, but through the wisdom of her regiment.”

“Now you, the whole world's ornament, the Queen On whose behalf both winds and oceans fight, Rule on with God, far from ambition seen, And succour still the pious with your might, That England you, you England long hold dear, Whom good men love as much as wicked fear.”

“Unallied and alone, queen Elizabeth maintained a glorious and successful war against the greatest power and the richest potentate in Europe. She distressed him in the West Indies. She insulted him in Spain. She took from him the empire of the sea. She fixed it in herself. She rendered all the projects of universal monarchy vain; and shook to the foundations the most exorbitant power, which ever disturbed the peace, or threatened the liberties of Europe... She, who seemed to have every thing to fear in the beginning of her reign, became in the progress of it terrible to her enemies... [S]he preserved her subjects in peace and plenty. While the glory of the nation was carried high by achievements in war: the riches and the strength of it were raised by the arts of peace to such a degree, as former ages had never seen, and as we of this age feel in the consequences.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”