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queen quotes

  •    The rose is red, the leaves are green, God save Elizabeth, our noble queen.

    -Anonymous
     Lines written by a Westminster schoolboy in the margin of his copy of Julius Caesar. Quoted in P  W Hasler (ed)  The House of Commons,1558^1603 (vol.1), p.474.

  • How different, how very different, from the home life of our own dear Queen!

    -Anonymous
    c.1892  Overheard from a member of the audience when Sarah Bernhardt appeared in the role of Cleopatra.

  • He was a braw gallant, And he play'd at the ba'; And the bonnie Earl of Murray Was the flower amang them a'. He was a braw gallant, And he play'd at the glove; And the bonnie Earl of Murray, O he was the Queen's luve. O lang will his lady Look owre the castle Doune, Ere she sees the Earl of Murray Come sounding thro'the toun.

    -Ballads
    'The Bonnie Earl of Murray'.

  • 'Yestreen the queen had four Maries, The night she'll hae but three; There was Marie Seaton, and Mari Beaton, And Marie Carmichael, and me.'

    -Ballads
    'Marie Hamilton'.

  • L'imagination est la reine du vrai, et le possible est une des provinces du vrai. Imagination is the queen of the truth and the possible is one of the provinces of the truth.

    - Charles Baudelaire
      Le Spleen de Paris,'Salon de1859', pt.3.

  • And king Solomon gave to the queen of Sheba all her desire, whatsoever sheasked, besidethat whichshehad brought unto the king.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Chronicles 9:12.

  • The queenofthesouth shall riseup inthejudgment with thisgeneration, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew12:42.

  • When Sir Joshua Reynolds died All Nature was degraded; The King dropp'd a tear into the Queen's ear, And all his pictures faded.

    -William Blake
    c.1808  Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses.

  • The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, All of a summer day: The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts And took them quite away!

    -Dodgson
      Alice's  Adventures in Wonderland, ch.11,'Who Stole the Tarts?'.

  • Like an ambassador that beds a queen With the nice caution of a sword between.

    -John Cleveland
      'The  Antiplatonic'.

  • I'd like to be a queen in people's hearts but I don't see myself being Queen of this country.

    - Princess of Wales Diana
      Television interview on BBC1's Panorama, 20 Nov.

  • The moment of the Queen's crowning is come.

    - Richard Dimbleby
      Commentary on the coronation at Westminster  Abbey, 2  Jun.

  • The motorcycle black madonna Two-wheeled gypsy queen.

    - Bob pseudonym of  Robert Allen Zimmerman Dylan
      'Gates of Eden'.

  • If I am to disclose to you what I should prefer if I follow theinclinationof mynature,it isthis: beggar-womanand single, far rather than queen and married!

    -Elizabeth I
       Attributed reply to an imperial envoy. Quoted in  J E Neale Queen Elizabeth I (1979).

  • Though I be a woman yet I have as good a courage answerable to my place as ever my father had. I am your anointed queen. I will never be by violence constrained to do anything. I thank God I am indeed endued with such qualities that if I were turned out of the realm in my petticoat I were able to live in any place of Christendom.

    -Elizabeth I
      Speech to a parliamentary delegation, 5 Nov. Quoted in Christopher Haigh Elizabeth I (1988).

  • Hail our Great Queen in her regalia; One foot in Canada, the other in Australia.

    -James Gay
    Attributed to Gay by William  Arthur Deacon in TheFour Jameses (1927).

  • I am the monarch of the sea, The Ruler of the Queen's Navee, Whose praise Great Britain loudly chants And we are his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts!

    - Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck) Gilbert
      HMS Pinafore, act1.

  • When I was a lad I served a term As office boy to an attorney's firm. I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor, And I polished up the handle of the big front door. I polished up that handle so carefullee That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!

    - Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck) Gilbert
      HMS Pinafore, act 2.

  • What that Sicilian mule was to me, I have been to the Queen.

    -W(illiam) E(wart) Gladstone
      Memorandum on his relationship with Queen Victoria, 20 Mar.

  • Don't be surprised, If I demur, for, be advised, My passport's green. No glass of ours was ever raised To toastThe Queen.

    - SeamusJustin Heaney
      'An Open Letter to Blake and  Andrew, Editors, Contemporary British Verse, Penguin Books, Middlesex'. Heaney was complaining at his inclusion in the book edited by Blake Morrison and  Andrew Motion on the grounds of his Irish nationality.

  • The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.

    - (James Henry) Leigh Hunt
      Of Cleopatra.'The Nile'.

  • She stands an instant in the sun Athwart her harsh land's red and green Hands of a serf, and warrior eyes Of some flame-sceptred Irish queen. † As if she does not care that life Has reft the jewels from her hair But grieves that menial needs and base Were those that left her palace bare.

    - Robin pseudonym of IrisGuiver Wilkinson Hyde
      The Godwits Fly, ch.23. This poem is an adaptation of 'The Farmer's Wife', first published in The Desolate Star (1929).

  • When all the world is young, lad, And all the trees are green; And every goose a swan, lad, And every lass a queen; Then hey for boot and horse, lad, And round the world away: Young blood must have its course, lad, And every dog his day.

    - Charles Kingsley
      Song. The Water Babies, ch.2.

  • Whenyou've shouted'Rule Britannia', whenyou've sung 'God save the Queen' When you've finished killing Kruger with your mouth Will you kindly drop a shilling in my little tambourine For a gentleman in Kharki ordered South?

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      The Absent-Minded Beggar.

  • And I will fare to Avalun, to the fairest of all maidens, to Argante the queen, an elf most fair, and she shall make my wounds all sound.

    -Layamon   fl.c.1190
    c.1190  Brut (translated by Eugene Mason,1912).

  • You have got to be a Queen to get away with a hat like that.

    - Anita Loos
      Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, ch.4.

  • I have not time to say any more, but to beg you will give my duty to the Queen, and let her know her army has had a glorious victory. MonsieurTallard and two other generals are in my coach, and I am following the rest.

    -John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough
      Note written on a tavern bill to his wife, Sarah,13  Aug, after the Battle of Blenheim.

  • Men, some to business, some to pleasure take; But every woman is at heart a rake: Men, some to quiet, some to public strife; But every lady would be Queen for life.

    - Alexander Pope
      Epistles to Several Persons,'To a Lady', l.215^8.

  • O, Brignal banks are wild and fair, And Greta woods are green And you may gather garlands there Would grace a summer queen.

    - Sir Walter Scott
      Rokeby, canto 3, stanza16.

  • Sun-girt city, thou hast been Ocean's child, and then his queen; Now is come a darker day, And thou soon must be his prey.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Lines written amongst the Euganean Hills', l.115^18.

  • No scandal about Queen Elizabeth, I hope?

    - Richard Brinsley Sheridan
      Mr Sneer, of Mr Puff's tragedy 'The Spanish Armada'. The Critic, act 2, sc.1.

  • After the first powerful plain manifesto The black statement of pistons, without more fuss, But gliding like a queen, she leaves the station. 807

    - Sir Stephen Harold Spender
      'The Express'.

  •    I think she was cut out for a Gentlewoman, but she was spoiled in the making. She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork; and, for the fashion, I believe they were made in the days of Queen Bess.

    -Jonathan Swift
      Polite Conversation, dialogue1.

  • It will be fun to be the first Jewish Queen of Egypt.

    - Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor
    c.1962  On taking the title role in Cleopatra. Attributed.

  • Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls.

    -Tennyson
      Maud, pt.1, sect.22, stanza 9, l.902.

  • And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace; But he rose upon their decks, and he cried: 'I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true; I have only done my dutyas a man is bound to do: With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Grenville die!' And he fell upon their decks, and he died.

    -Tennyson
      'The Revenge', stanza13, l.99^104.

  • Oh,iftheQueenwereaman,shewouldliketogoandgive those Russians, whose word one cannot believe, such a beating! We shall never be friends again till we have it out.

    -Victoria in full  Alexandrina Victoria
      Letter to Lord Beaconsfield,10 Jan.

  • We may say 'God Save the Queen', because nothing will save the Governor-General† Maintain your rage and your enthusiasm for the election now to be held and until polling day.

    - (Edward) Gough Whitlam
      On the Governor-General SirJohn Kerr's action in dissolving theAustralian Parliament,11 Nov.Whitlam lost the subsequent election.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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