Cromwell Quotes

Borrowing other people's culture and adopting other people's way of life does destroy nation's self-respect which is the greatest asset a true citizen can enjoy more than food and clothes, more than all amenities and more than military glory. You can adopt a system of government and a way of life, but can you adopt the past history, travail and tradition out of which that system of government and a way of life were evolved? Can we adopt King Charles, King John, Magna Carta and civil wars and Cromwell as our own? They can always say "We evolved a system and a way of life", but we must always sing in refrain, "We borrowed them". Adopting a culture is not the same as adopting the use of a gadget. It is like tying other peoples' mangoes to your tree, while plucking and throwing away your own. How absurd! ~ Manasa Rao

I got four volumes of the letters and speeches of Oliver Cromwell. He is prominent among the great unread, and treated so oddly by history that I wanted to hear his side of things. ~ Marilynne Robinson

He, Cromwell, says to his visitors, just tell them this, and tell them loud: to each monk, one bed: to each bed, one monk. Is that so hard for them? ~ Hilary Mantel

It's a matter of public safety for us all. Innocent people are going to prison, leaving the real perpetrators on the street, often to continue their acts of violence. ~ Robert K. Cromwell

All what stuck in my mind was what the judge had said, and that was during the assault there must have been some passive co-operation on my part. Added to the fact that the Wests had only been fined £25 each for each of the charges against them, a total of £100 was all that I was worth. ~ Stephen Richards

It's a blessed thing to die daily. For what is there in this world to be accounted of! The best men according to the flesh, and things, are lighter than vanity. I find this only good, to love the Lord and his poor despised people, to do for them and to be ready to suffer with them ... and he that is found worthy of this hath obtained great favour from the Lord; and he that is established in this shall ( being conformed to Christ and the rest of the Body) participate in the glory of a resurrection which will answer all. ~ Oliver Cromwell

I picked up a snake once. In Italy."
"Why did you do that?"
"For a bet."
"Was it poisonous?"
"We didn't know. That was the point of the bet."
"Did it bite you?"
"Of course."
"Why of course?"
"It wouldn't be much of a story, would it? If I'd put it down unharmed, and away it slid? ~ Hilary Mantel

The king's council, and obliged him, Thomas Cromwell, by ~ Hilary Mantel

Our manly ways and stern simplicity wreak much confusion to the enemy's councils. For they are men yet garb themselves as women, wearing wigs and finery and lace. And for this offense if it be God's will we will come upon them in the night, from the rear, and penetrate their degenerate bodies with our holy truth. For we are manly saints and possess the full swelling hardness of our faith, which gushes forevermore from Christ's unyielding root. ~ Oliver Cromwell

He, Cromwell, watches. They are not the same couple from day to day: sometimes doting, sometimes chilly and distanced. The billing and cooing, on the whole, is the more painful to watch.
516 ~ Hilary Mantel

Subtlety may deceive you; intedrity never will. ~ Oliver Cromwell

You know he will take the credit for your good ideas, and you the blame for his bad ones? When fortune turns against you, you will feel her lash: you always, he never.
One day, when you are still adjusting your harness, you will look up and see him thundering downhill.
pg. 495 ~ Hilary Mantel

The kids know me from 'Babe,' but usually it is 'L.A. Confidential' that people remember, which was the second film I did. I have worked with some really good people and the films that I've done for the most part have been good. ~ James Cromwell

A vital film that needed to be made at this point in history and has been made magnificently. ~ James Cromwell

P. 274 ... his trademark decision to surrender power as commander in chief and then president, was not ... a sign that he had conquered his ambitions, but rather that he fully realized that all ambitions were inherently insatiable and unconquerable. He knew himself well enough to resist the illusion that he transcended human nature. Unlike Julius Caesar and Oliver Cromwell before him, and Napoleon, Lenin, and Mao after him, he understood that the greater glory resided in posterity's judgment. If you aspire to live forever in the memory of future generations, you must demonstrate the ultimate self-confidence to leave the final judgment to them. And he did. ~ Joseph J. Ellis

I was told by my agent that a number of big stars won't work with anyone two inches taller than them and most of them are under six feet, so you have to be prepared to have trouble. ~ James Cromwell

I'm a character actor. Nobody's ever seemed to think of me as a leading man. I'm 6'6'. I've got a big nose. I'm gangly. I've got crooked teeth. That's certainly not Brad Pitt. I'm still around and alive, so if they need older guys, I guess they're thinking of me. ~ James Cromwell

I was going to design sports cars, but my father came to my college to visit me. At the time he was making a picture in Sweden and he took me there with him. I got to see Ingmar Bergman's company and I thought, 'Gee, filmmaking is a lot more fun than sports cars,' so I decided to follow him and go into acting. ~ James Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell banned kissing on Sundays---even for married couples---on pain of a prison sentence. ~ Mitchell Symons

A man never rises higher than when he does not know whither his path can still lead him. ~ Oliver Cromwell

English history turned on Henry VIII and his desires, his whims almost. And it was down to Cromwell to make those desires happen. He was the guy that fixed it. He was also the guy that eased Henry's conscience. Because Henry VIII had an enormous, tender conscience and great theological knowledge. ~ Ben Miles

Very interesting show. It's "Hotel" with the E missing. Hot L Baltimore. It was about a rundown hotel which had become kind of a residential not quite welfare but almost welfare hotel with a very bizarre collection of people.The desk clerk was played by Jamie Cromwell. That was his first big thing. Conchata Ferrell played April, the main of the two prostitutes, and my character didn't exist in the [stage] show. ~ Richard Masur

I don't look like a leading man, whatever they look like. It's changing a little. ~ James Cromwell

That high pitch scream emitted by Rose made me wince! Her ear bursting howls would stun me into silence as much as it silenced the eldest child in their home, eight-year-old Anna-Marie. ~ Stephen Richards

Cromwell is just as much of a bloody dictator as was Stalin. ~ Vladimir Putin

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken. ~ Oliver Cromwell

The person is a mystery. What I'm playing is the person so I really get to tell you and show you and communicate to you who I think the real person is and that real person is me. The most important thing is to play the human being you are creating, which is my job. ~ James Cromwell

The last part of life is a spiritual concern. You need to find a context to put your life into, that will allow you to go through it with as much grace and balance as possible, even if there is rebellion and adventure and exploration and resistance. ~ James Cromwell

In the version of democracy that we are all used to, every five years or so we enter a voting booth and choose a politician from the mostly narrow choice of political parties presented to us in general elections. We then let the victor get on with ruling over us until the next time the parties want our votes. ~ David Cromwell

The History of Ireland in two words: Ah well.

The Invasion by the Vikings: Ah well.

The Invasion by the Normans. The Flight of the Earls, Mr Oliver Cromwell. Daniel O'Connell, Robert Emmett, The Famine, Charles Stewart Parnell, Easter Rising, Michael Collins, Éamon De Valera, Éamon De Valera again (Dear Germany, so sorry to learn of the death of your Mr Hitler), Éamon De Valera again, the Troubles, the Tribunals, the Fianna Fáil Party, The Church, the Banks, the eight hundred years of rain: Ah well.

In the Aeneid Virgil tells it as Sunt lacrimae rerum, which in Robert Fitzgerald's translation means 'They weep for how the world goes', which is more eloquent than Ah well but means the same thing. ~ Niall Williams

Cambridge was run by a mixture of fogeys too old to be considered dangerous, and Puritans who had been packed into the place by Cromwell after he'd purged all the people he did consider dangerous. With a few exceptions such as Isaac Barrow, none of them would have had any use for Isaac's sundial, because it didn't look like an old sundial, and they'd prefer telling time wrong the Classical way to telling it right the newfangled way. The curves that Newton plotted on the wall were a methodical document of their wrongness - a manifesto like Luther's theses on the church-door. ~ Neal Stephenson

This amply shows Cromwell's frame of mind before leaving for Ireland. His fear was that the young Charles, who had been declared king in Scotland immediately after his father's death, would land in Ireland, rally the people to the royalist cause and lead an invasion to England. In the summer of 1649 it seemed to Cromwell that Ireland had become a royalist state and the prospects of a successful English invasion of that country were receding with every passing day. ~ Sean O'Callaghan

My prayer is that God give me no longer life than I shall be glad to use mine office in edification, and not in destruction. ~ Oliver Cromwell

It has been remarked that almost every character which has excited either attention or pity has owed part of its success to merit, and part to a happy concurrence of circumstances in its favor. Had Caesar or Cromwell exchanged countries, the one might have been a sergeant and the other an exciseman. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

I don't know how many parts I've lost because a lot of the politics in California are very conservative, and I'm fairly outspoken. I always tried to get as much politics in as I could, because I do believe in class struggle, and I think that's what's left out. ~ James Cromwell

My first films were comedy, 'Murder By Death,' and 'The Cheap Detective.' But now they won't think of me as a comedian. Now, they think of me as a bad guy, and I can't do comedy. ~ James Cromwell

Mr. Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it. ~ Oliver Cromwell

God made them as stubble to our swords. ~ Oliver Cromwell

. . . to voice private sympathies in the context of an official proceeding would require Washington to become, in his own words, 'lost to my own character.' Here, in this reference to character, Washington hit upon the essential difference between himself and Arnold. Washington's sense of right and wrong existed outside the impulsive demands of his own self-interest. Rules mattered to Washington. Even though Congress had made his life miserable for the last four years, he had found ways to do what he considered best for his army and his country without challenging the supremacy of civil authority. To do otherwise, to declare himself, like the seventeenth-century English revolutionary Oliver Cromwell, master of his army and his country, would require him to become 'lost to my own character.' For Arnold, on the other hand, rules were made to be broken. He had done it as a pre-Revolutionary merchant and he had done it as military governor of Philadelphia. This did not make Arnold unusual. Many prominent Americans before and since have lived in the gray area between selfishness and altruism. What made Arnold unique was the god-like inviolability he attached to his actions. He had immense respect for a man like Washington, but Arnold was, in the end, the leading person-age in the drama that was his life. Not lost to his own character, but lost in it, Arnold did whatever Arnold wanted. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

Once a film is shot, the thing that mostly happens is that I go see all the things I would have fixed in my performance and sometimes, very rarely, I see a moment that surprise me and I go, "Oh, that's not bad. That was nice." ~ James Cromwell

Joy is what people take,happiness is what you make,pain is something you feel and the more you feed it the more it works. ~ Royal Cromwell

In a Balkan country, not so many years ago, a party which had been beaten by a narrow margin in a general election retrieved its fortunes by shooting a sufficient number of the representatives of the other side to give it a majority ... Cromwell and Robespierre ... acted likewise.. ~ Bertrand Russell

WEEDS AND NETTLES, BRIARS AND THORNS, HAVE THRIVEN UNDER YOUR SHADOW, DISSETTLEMENT AND DIVISION, DISCONTENTMENT AND DISSATISFACTION, TOGETHER WITH REAL DANGERS TO THE WHOLE. ~ Oliver Cromwell

All of them - my father, mother, step-mother, and grandmother - were all wonderful actors and performers and they are an inspiration to me, both in their craft and in their humanity. ~ James Cromwell

There he is, bent over the page, with a monocle in his right eye, wholly devoted to the noble but rugged task of ferreting out the error. He has already promised himself to write a little monograph in which he will relate the finding of the book and the discovery of the error, if there really is one hidden there. In the end, he discovers nothing and contents himself with possession of the book. He closes it, gazes at it, gazes at it again, goes to the window and holds it in the sun. The only copy! At this moment a Caesar or a Cromwell passes beneath his window, on the road to power and glory. He turns his back, closes the window, stretches in his hammock, and fingers the leaves of the book slowly, lovingly, tasting it sip by sip ... An only copy! ~ Machado De Assis

Opportunity is sometimes hard to recognize if you're only looking for a lucky break. ~ Oliver Cromwell

I think the relationship of indigenous people to their environment ... that those were ethical omnivores. ~ James Cromwell

I don't study films particularly. I plan to direct, but I'm not watching film - I watch the entire film to see how the story goes, but I don't say, 'Oh, so he does a slow pan here, or he pulls here, watch the crane shot, or look at the composition,' because it's got to be my eye. ~ James Cromwell

Audley pats his arm. He wants to console him. But who can begin to do it? He si the inconsolable Master Cromwell: the unknowable, the inconstruable, the probably indefeasible Master Cromwell. ~ Hilary Mantel

What is all our histories, but God showing himself, shaking and trampling on everything that he has not planted. ~ Oliver Cromwell

I think the obligation of an artist is to make a difference in the world. That is what matters most to me. I think that artists are the leaders of the world because they do not have a connection to the industrial complex, the day-to-day short-term survival that most people are involved with. ~ James Cromwell

Cromwell. I am not such a hard man that I don't see how you are left. Do you know what I say? I say I don't know one man in England who would have done what you have done, for a man disgraced and fallen. The king says so. Even him, Chapuys, the Emperor's man, he says, you cannot fault what's-he-called. I say, it's a pity you ever saw Wolsey. It's a pity you don't work for me." "Well," he says, "we all want ~ Hilary Mantel

Why is it so difficult for me to take my eyes off from an anomaly I have spotted? It's embarrassing. Like the time my dad introduced me to his colleague who was missing one of his front teeth. I was just staring at the gap in his mouth like an idiot. ~ J. Max Cromwell

Men like Carew, he knows, tend to blame him, Cromwell, for Anne's rise in the world; he facilitated it, he broke the old marriage and let in the new. He does not expect them to soften to him, to include him in their companionship; he only wants them not to spit in his dinner. ~ Hilary Mantel

And Louis is weak. Let him give an inch, and some Cromwell will appear. ~ Hilary Mantel

I had forgotten the fact that I had been raped, something no one would understand, how could anyone forget something as traumatic as being raped? ~ Stephen Richards

It's just that you are practiced at persuading, and sometimes it's quite difficult, sir to distinguish being persuaded by you from being knocked down in street and stamped on.
Pg.406 ~ Hilary Mantel

But if you really want to learn about life, get a cat. The way I think people should relate to animals is with a cat. Because the world is his. ~ James Cromwell

There isn't a tree to hang a man, water to drown a man nor soil to bury a man ~ Oliver Cromwell

I've been dreaming of a time when The English are sick to death of Labour and Tories And spit upon the name Oliver Cromwell and denounce this royal line that still salutes him And will salute him forever. ~ Steven Morrissey

And the more the king snips and carps, the more do his petitioners seek out the company of Cromwell, so unfailing in his amiable courtesy. At home, Jo comes to him looking perplexed. She ~ Hilary Mantel

Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood, Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood. ~ Thomas Gray

During the run up to the Iraq War, Mike Farrell and I did get on television kind of frequently, but then they saw that that didn't work. They really couldn't bait us into being stupid, so they stopped. You know the mainstream media, corporate media, avoids ever giving anyone who has anything to say a platform, if they can possibly help it. ~ James Cromwell

Do not trust the cheering, for those persons would shout as much if you or I were going to be hanged. ~ Oliver Cromwell

But we glared into each other's eyes like men who have ruined each other already, and who only wait to make the full disaster known ~ M.T. Anderson

From the 15th century to 1688, England and Wales, like Scotland, had been peripheral kingdoms in the European power game, more often at war with each other that with Continental powers, and - except under Oliver Cromwell - scarcely very successful on those occasions when they did engage the Dutch, or the French, or the Spanish. ~ Linda Colley

Nature can do more than physicians. ~ Oliver Cromwell

In the Congress of the United States, Cromwell had known a good many men who were possessed of absolute certainty, and this he feared so much that he felt the only real and enduring evil on the face of the earth was unbending certainty, unshakable orthodoxy. ~ Howard Fast

Authority is the assumption that someone else knows better than you. ~ James Cromwell

Once you'd been with Freddie, you wouldn't go anywhere else.' (How true this was to prove.) This incessant bragging by Fred West was at best, annoying and at worst, sickening. According to him, he was God's gift to women. ~ Stephen Richards

There are reasons to have rules and regulations. That I understand. Authority is a different thing. Authority is to maintain its own position by increasing its power and domination over those people it is supposedly protecting. ~ James Cromwell

Paint me as I am. If you leave out the scars and wrinkles, I will not pay you a shilling. ~ Oliver Cromwell

When I see that the nineteenth century has crowned the idolatry of Art with the deification of Love, so that every poet is supposed to have pierced to the holy of holies when he has announced that Love is the Supreme, or the Enough, or the All, I feel that Art was safer in the hands of the most fanatical of Cromwell's major generals than it will be if ever it gets into mine. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Oh, justice is what you're threatened with. ~ Thomas Cromwell

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.

In the name of God, go!

-Oliver Cromwell on the Dissolution of Parliament (April 20, 1653) ~ Oliver Cromwell

As a child, I was attractive to paedophiles. I suppose being indecently assaulted when I was 13 years old should have warned me that there were some weird and dangerous men out there, but I had got over that episode in my life. ~ Stephen Richards

When the cardinal came to a closed door he would flatter it
oh beautiful yielding door! Then he would try tricking it open. And you are just the same, just the same." He pours himself some of the duke's present. "But in the last resort, you just kick it in. ~ Hilary Mantel

Every day is perfect because there's no other day! As a friend of mine said, "Ride the horse in the direction it's going." When you do that, you realize that every moment, every breath, every sound, every encounter is a gift. You bloody well better enjoy it. ~ James Cromwell

I always thought of myself as being the unluckiest girl I knew. I was, I believed, a 'jinx' and I was 'jinxed', or so I thought! ~ Stephen Richards

Taxation, the very thing that had triggered the British civil wars, would do so again, this time in America. The taxes may have been different, but the result would once again be disaster. What happened in America was really round two of those wars - the civil war of the British Empire, with the Hanoverians playing the part of the Stuarts, and the Americans the heirs of the revolutionaries, of Cromwell and of William III, the inheritors of a true British liberty, that had somehow got lost in its own motherland. ~ Simon Schama

Pets are humanizing. They remind us we have an obligation and responsibility to preserve and nurture and care for all life. ~ James Cromwell

The risks of transporting deadly nuclear waste, the environmental justice impacts and the long-term health effects of both these projects are untenable ... We cannot afford to be silent on these important issues. ~ James Cromwell

Those who fail the king do not die in their beds. ~ V.E. Lynne

Necessity has no law. ~ Oliver Cromwell

I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else. ~ Oliver Cromwell

The gift blesses the giver. ~ Hilary Mantel

Usually, I'm the kind of actor where you show me once or twice, I can do it. I don't do it creatively, but I know how to do the process. ~ James Cromwell

For that which you mention concerning liberty of conscience, I meddle not with any man's conscience. ~ Oliver Cromwell

I play an 89-year-old man whose wife has Alzheimer's in a movie called 'Still.' I play a World War II veteran, I acted with my son and it's called 'Memorial Day.' ~ James Cromwell

Told me if I did not smell of the fire then I smelled of the frying pan. ~ Hilary Mantel

I drove through the stockyards of Texas on a motorcycle. It doesn't let you escape what surrounds you and what it smells like and feels like - and what hit me was the realization that something that was alive and had feelings will suffer before a piece of it is placed on our plates. ~ James Cromwell

Those who stop being better stop being good. ~ Oliver Cromwell

First lead [in a movie] requires a different approach like trying not to give it all away in the first scene. It is a skill, a learned skill. ~ James Cromwell

We are Englishmen; that is one good fact. ~ Oliver Cromwell

He thinks of making his fortune. We all know that money sticks to yours hands.
No, It passes through them, alas. ~ Hilary Mantel

People who understand the dark understand the universe,and therefor they can connect their soul so life can give them the uplifting mystic it has. ~ Royal Cromwell

We don't need to eat anyone who would run, swim, or fly away if he could. ~ James Cromwell

I have learned that if you fear God, you have no one else to fear. ~ Oliver Cromwell

Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell; and George the Third - ['Treason!' cried the Speaker] - may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it. ~ Patrick Henry

But there is another possible attitude towards the records of the past, and I have never been able to understand why it has not been more often adopted. To put it in its curtest form, my proposal is this: That we should not read historians, but history. Let us read the actual text of the times. Let us, for a year, or a month, or a fortnight, refuse to read anything about Oliver Cromwell except what was written while he was alive. There is plenty of material; from my own memory (which is all I have to rely on in the place where I write) I could mention offhand many long and famous efforts of English literature that cover the period. Clarendon's History, Evelyn's Diary, the Life of Colonel Hutchinson. Above all let us read all Cromwell's own letters and speeches, as Carlyle published them. But before we read them let us carefully paste pieces of stamp-paper over every sentence written by Carlyle. Let us blot out in every memoir every critical note and every modern paragraph. For a time let us cease altogether to read the living men on their dead topics. Let us read only the dead men on their living topics. ~ G.K. Chesterton