Queen Victoria Quotes

If pushed to say what I like about Elizabeth, who, as I'm sure most of you know, overtook Queen Victoria this week to become our longest-serving monarch, it would be her uncomplaining, getting-on-with-it ethic. ~ John Niven

That Book, the Bible, accounts for the supremacy of England. England has become great & happy by the knowledge of the true God through Jesus Christ. ~ Queen Victoria

They beg to a Silver king, and spit upon Red queens. ~ Victoria Aveyard

I will not be a red queen ~ Victoria Aveyard

Nowadays a parlor maid as ignorant as Queen Victoria was when she came to the throne would be classed as mentally defective. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I felt quite a responsibility when I played Elizabeth I but nobody here remembers her! And then I felt a responsibility when I played Queen Victoria but not many people remember her. ~ Judi Dench

It is the function of the novelist to reveal the hidden life at its source: to tell us more about Queen Victoria than could be known, and thus to produce a character who is not the Queen Victoria of history. ~ E. M. Forster

I would venture to warn against too great intimacy with artists as it is very seductive and a little dangerous. ~ Queen Victoria

Then, dear Mamma, I hope you will grant me the first request I make to you, as Queen. Let me be by myself for an hour. ~ Queen Victoria

[Queen Victoria had been denouncing the Women's Rights movement] ... And after chloroform was introduced to ease the pains of childbirth, she demanded that it be used on her. Religious and medical conservatives were shocked. They said God had decreed that women must suffer in childbirth as atonement for the sins of Eve. But queen Victoria wouldn't accept this particular anti-woman's-rights dictum. She became one of the first women to use anesthesia during childbirth , and knighted Dr. James Simpson, the Scottish physician who developed this use of chloroform, though he was excommunicated by his church for doing so. ~ Miriam Gurko

You could have been my red queen. ~ Victoria Aveyard

Her grip is strong as she shakes my hand; for once someone isn't afraid I'll break like glass.
"Every happiness to you, Lady Mareena. I can see this one suits you." She jerks her head toward
Maven. "Not like fancy Samos," she adds in a playful whisper. "She'll make a sad queen, and you a
happy princess, mark my words."
"Marked, ~ Victoria Aveyard

[To the bishop who suggested the widowed queen now consider herself 'as married to Christ':] That's what I call twaddle! ~ Queen Victoria

I think people really marry far too much; it is such a lottery after all, and for a poor woman a very doubtful happiness. ~ Queen Victoria

For a man to strike any women is most brutal, and I, as well as everyone else, think this far worse than any attempt to shoot, which, wicked as it is, is at least more comprehensible and more courageous. ~ Queen Victoria

It's to bad we didn't stay longer", I murmur, looking out at the river. "I would have liked to die close to home. ~ Victoria Aveyard

Being married gives one one's position like nothing else can. ~ Queen Victoria

I positively think that ladies who are always enceinte quite disgusting; it is more like a rabbit or guinea-pig than anything else and really it is not very nice. ~ Queen Victoria

Reading about Queen Victoria has been a passion of mine since, as a child, I came across Laurence Housman's play 'Happy and Glorious,' with its Ernest Shepard illustrations. ~ A. N. Wilson

I've written extensively on Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth and seen up close how those women, who were born when the country hoped for a male heir, made their way as leaders. ~ Kate Williams

They trained me for this. It's their own fault. They helped make their own doom. ~ Victoria Aveyard

A young English couple was visiting with me one summer after I had been composting humanure for about six years. One evening, as dinner was being prepared, the couple suddenly understood the horrible reality of their situation: the food they were about to eat was recycled human shit. When this fact abruptly dawned upon them, it seemed to set off an instinctive alarm, possibly inherited directly from Queen Victoria. "We don't want to eat shit!" they informed me, rather distressed (that's an exact quote), as if in preparing dinner I had simply set a steaming turd on a plate in front of them with a knife, fork and napkin. ~ Joseph Jenkins

His purity was too great, his aspiration too high for this poor, miserable world! His great soul is now only enjoying that for which it was worthy! ~ Queen Victoria

One full wall was given over to Father's stamp albums, fat leather volumes whose colors indicated the reign of each monarch: black for Queen Victoria, red for Edward the Seventh, green for George the Fifth, and blue for our present monarch, George the Sixth. ~ Alan Bradley

For the very first time Andrew realized that life, real life, had no connection with the way people spent their days, whose lips they kissed, what medals were pinned on them, or the shoes they mended. Life, real life went on soundlessly ... ultimately there was no difference between Queen Victoria and the most wretched beggar in London: both were complex machines made up of bone, organ, and tissue, whose fuel was the breath of God. ~ Felix J. Palma

In the midst of affection and longing the iron hand appeared within the velvet glove.... ~ Cecil Woodham-Smith

I saw the world. I learnt of new cultures. I flew across an ocean. I wore women's clothing. Made a friend. Fell in love. Who cares if I lost a wager? Queen Victoria: I do! I've got 20 quid riding on you ~ Jules Verne

Victoria was, at the time, far more empathetic and forgiving, chiding Albert for his narrow view of humanity. 'I always think that one ought always to be indulgent towards other people, as I always think, if we had not been well brought up and well taken care of, we might also have gone astray. ~ Leslie Carroll

I am every day more convinced that we women, if we are to be good women, feminine and amiable and domestic, are not fitted to reign; at least it is they that drive themselves to the work which it entails. ~ Queen Victoria

Then there's Queen Victoria, like a large tea cosy, & Wellington, sleek as a mastiff with paw extended ... ~ Virginia Woolf

Both the Queen and Prince Albert seemed to have spent far more time with their children, than one usually associates with Victorian life. They ate together, and walked, rode, played and painted together. And the fond parents were often present at bath time and in the nurseries that Prince Albert had designed close at hand. ~ Sarah Ferguson Duchess Of York

My reign has been anything but traditional. Let's not start now, shall we? ~ Courtney Brandt

Wear that scarf," he said, pointing to a blue cashmere scarf hanging on a peg. "It matches your eyes."
Alec looked at it. Suddenly he was filled with hate - for the scarf, for Magnus, and most of all for himself. "Don't tell me," he said. "The scarf's a hundred years old, and it was given to you by Queen Victoria right before she died, for special services to the Crown or something."
Magnus sat up. "What's gotten into you?"
Alec stared at him. "Am I the newest thing in this apartment?"
"I think that honor goes to Chairman Meow. He's only two."
"I said newest, not youngest," Alec snapped. ~ Cassandra Clare

In the 1970s, I used to buy opals and moonstones at the Queen Victoria Market, which were seen as old-fashioned and too heavy at the time. ~ Kerry Greenwood

He told me once that he didn't fear conscription as much as everyone else because the dozen bloodthirsty girls he was leaving behind were far more dangerous. ~ Victoria Aveyard

There was soot and orphans everywhere, and gaslit cobbled streets full of fog and sinister gentlemen out for a night of illicit murder. It was a strict and unforgiving society; looking at a piano, eating too much butter, dancing with elan
the sour-faced Queen Victoria forbade all these things. And, it was also raining in the London of themdays
dirty grey slabs of rain that left everywhere shining and slippery. ~ Gideon Defoe

Albert wrote to his 'dearest cousin' on 26 June to offer his 'sincerest felicitations on that great change which had taken place in your life'. It was a difficult letter to compose. Now that she was 'Queen of the mightiest land of Europe', he went on, 'the happiness of millions' lay in her hands, and he trusted that Heaven would assist her in 'that high but difficult task." He hoped for a long and happy - and glorious - reign, in which she would achieve the 'thankfulness and love' of her subjects. He wished neither to be indiscreet nor to 'abuse' her time, but, he closed, 'May I pray you to think likewise sometimes of your cousins in Bonn, and to continue to them that kindness you favoured them with till now.' And he signed it as 'your Majesty's most obedient and faithful servant, Albert'. ~ Stanley Weintraub

Men never fail to dwell on maternity as a disqualification for the possession of many civil and political rights. Suggest the idea of women having a voice in making laws and administering the Government in the halls of legislation, in Congress, or the British Parliament, and men will declaim at once on the disabilities of maternity in a sneering contemptuous way, as if the office of motherhood was undignified and did not comport with the highest public offices in church and state. It is vain that we point them to Queen Victoria, who has carefully reared a large family, while considering and signing ... ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

He felt as if he'd woken up, weak and confused, only to be told that he'd spent the last three weeks in bed with a fever
and that during his illness, Queen Victoria had abdicated the throne and run off with a lion-tamer from Birmingham. The world seemed an entirely different place. ~ Courtney Milan

To even be called the 'teen queen' is crazy. ~ Victoria Justice

Brushing dirt from his coat, Sam ignored the wild-eyed looks the other three gave him. Surely a house like this had enough staff to clean up a little dirt?
"And who is this young man?" the old lady demanded.
Sam opened his mouth to reply, but froze when he saw just who the old woman was.
"May I present Sam Morgan, Your Highness," Griffin said.
Bloody hell. It was Queen Victoria. They'd just burrowed their way into Buckingham Palace. ~ Kady Cross

I was born in 1927, the only child of middle-class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which they never rose sufficiently above history to leave, of that monstrous dwarf Queen Victoria. ~ John Fowles

The Queen has done all she could on the dreadful subject of vivisection, and hopes that Mr. Gladstone will speak strongly against such a practice which is a disgrace to humanity ... ~ Queen Victoria

It is calculated that George III had an astonishing fifty-six grandchildren. He did not have one legitimate heir. The vision of Charlotte had sustained the people through the direst years of the regency. Without her, all hope seemed gone.

From "Becoming Queen Victoria ~ Kate Williams

My kind publishers, Toby Mundy and Margaret Stead of Atlantic Books, have commissioned me to write the life of Queen Victoria. ~ A. N. Wilson

Everybody grows but me. ~ Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria was a woman of peerless common sense; her common sense, which is a rare gift at any time, amounted to genius. She had been brought up by her mother with the utmost simplicity, and she retained it to the end, and conducted her public and private life alike by that infallible guide. ~ E.F. Benson

He speaks to Me as if I was a public meeting. ~ Queen Victoria

Though Queen Victoria in England had suggested that makeup was impolite, even vanity, Gideon saw it as yet another weapon. It was not so different from magic. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

I don't know how, but I hope you become queen one day. Imagine what you could do then? The Red queen. ~ Victoria Aveyard

We will not have failure - only success and new learning. ~ Queen Victoria

Although a madman, Norton wrote letters to Abraham Lincoln and Queen Victoria which they took seriously. ~ Kerry Thornley

I think baking cookies is equal to Queen Victoria running an empire. There's no difference in how seriously you take the job, how seriously you approach your whole life. ~ Martha Stewart

Nothing will turn a man's home into a castle more quickly and effectively than a dachshund. ~ Victoria Magazine

I feel sure that no girl would go to the altar if she knew all. ~ Queen Victoria

A rule which I cannot sufficiently recommend is, never to permit people to speak on subjects concerning yourself or your affairs, without your having yourself desired them to do so. The moment a person behaves improperly on this subject, change the conversation, and make the individual feel that he has made a mistake.... People will certainly try to speak to you on your own personal affairs; decline it boldly, and they will leave you alone.... ~ Queen Victoria

The Duchess (of Kent) was a duck who had hatched a swan. ~ Cecil Woodham-Smith

More than husband and consort, Albert was everything to Victoria, and Osborne was unthinkable without him. ~ Sarah Ferguson

It's not what they think of me that matters - but what I think of them. ~ Queen Victoria

The great event of the evening was Jenny Lind's appearance and her complete triumph. She has a most exquisite, powerful and really quite peculiar voice, so round, soft and flexible and her acting is charming and touching and very natural. ~ Queen Victoria

Oh! If those selfish men, who are the cause of all one's misery, only knew what their poor slaves go through! What suffering, what humiliation to the delicate feelings of a poor woman, above all a young one, especially with those nasty doctors. ~ Queen Victoria

Egypt, too, learned to respect the long arm of British capitalism. During the nineteenth century, French and British investors lent huge sums to the rulers of Egypt, first in order to finance the Suez Canal project, and later to fund far less successful enterprises. Egyptian debt swelled, and European creditors increasingly meddled in Egyptian affairs. In 1881 Egyptian nationalists had had enough and rebelled. They declared a unilateral abrogation of all foreign debt. Queen Victoria was not amused. A year later she dispatched her army and navy to the Nile and Egypt remained a British protectorate until after World War Two. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Queen Victoria, one of our more frumpy Queen's. They're all frumpy aren't they? Because it's a bad idea when cousin's marry. ~ Eddie Izzard

In the early forties and fifties almost everybody "had about enough to live on," and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby. ~ M. E. W. Sherwood

He was always teaching, moulding her, encouraging her to curb her temper; in many ways he was as much a father figure to her as he was her husband; she in turn admired his knowledge and teaching, as she did everything about him. ~ Sarah Ferguson

Compare King William with the philosopher Haeckel. The king is one of the anointed by the most high, as they claim - one upon whose head has been poured the divine petroleum of authority. Compare this king with Haeckel, who towers an intellectual colossus above the crowned mediocrity. Compare George Eliot with Queen Victoria. The Queen is clothed in garments given her by blind fortune and unreasoning chance, while George Eliot wears robes of glory woven in the loom of her own genius.
The world is beginning to pay homage to intellect, to genius, to heart.
We have advanced. We have reaped the benefit of every sublime and heroic self-sacrifice, of every divine and brave act; and we should endeavor to hand the torch to the next generation, having added a little to the intensity and glory of the flame. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Even in my dreams I never imagined that I should find so much love on Earth.' (Prince Albert) ~ Stanley Weintraub

Make no mistake, my girl," he finally breathes. "You are playing the game as someone's pawn. ~ Victoria Aveyard

At a tender age, I commandeered half a quire of foolscap from my father's desk and sat down to write a book ... I had observed onprinted fly leaves the words "By the author of, etc." ... So under the title of my prospective work I wrote: By the author of "Les Miserables," "The Woman in White," "Dombey and Son," "Tom Brown's Schooldays" and "Our Life in the Highlands," the last-named being an opus of good Queen Victoria. I had not read all these works but they existed on our bookshelves, and I hoped to produce something worthy of comparison. ~ Rheta Childe Dorr

I have lived with you and loved you, and now you are gone. Gone where I cannot follow, until I have finished all of my days. ~ Victoria Hanley

The youngest member of this ageing community was ex-variety artiste, Patrick L. Balls. Fifty-nine now, he spent out his remaining years pulling a rope lift and bottling fruit. He had once whistled Ave Maria for Queen Victoria. She wasn't present at the time, but nevertheless that's who he was whistling it for. ~ Spike Milligan

Oh! It is dreadful...that one is almost always separated from those ones loves dearly and is encumbered with those one dislikes. -Queen Victoria ~ Cecil Woodham-Smith

We placed the wreaths upon the splendid granite sarcophagus, and at its feet, and felt that only the earthly robe we loved so much was there. The pure, tender, loving spirit which loved us so tenderly, is above us - loving us, praying for us, and free from all suffering and woe - yes, that is a comfort, and that first birthday in another world must have been a far brighter one than any in this poor world below! ~ Queen Victoria

If there was ever a person begging for an elbow to the face, it is Evangeline Samos. ~ Victoria Aveyard

The greatest maxim of all is that children should be brought up as simply and in as domestic a way as possible, and that (not interfering with their lessons) they should be as much as possible with their parents, and learn to place the greatest confidence in them in all things. ~ Queen Victoria

Napoleon, who had an aversion to the moral laxity of the eighteenth century, which he blamed on the domination of society by women, was determined to reform family life on Roman, or perhaps rather on Corsican, principles. It was with him, not with Queen Victoria, that Victorian morality originated. ~ J. Christopher Herold

The English have this extraordianry respect for longevity. The best example of this was Queen Victoria, a most unpleasant woman who achieved a sort of public affection simply by living to be an enormous age. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

One of the very few valid criticisms of Queen Victoria is that she was not sufficiently concerned with improvement of the conditions in which a great mass of her subjects passed their lives. She lived through an age of profound social change, but neither public health, nor housing, nor the education of her people, nor their representation, engaged much of her time. ~ Cecil Woodham-Smith

In India, as we saw, the Sepoy Mutiny led to a vast reorganization of British colonialism in the area, sending out a viceroy from London and before too long, Queen Victoria was proclaimed "Empress of India," with this great empire, ruling over maharajahs and other local potentates. ~ Webster Tarpley

I am the king and you could've been my Red Queen. ~ Victoria Aveyard

Fear can be a good thing. Fear doesn't let you forget. ~ Victoria Aveyard

[On same-sex marriage:] No woman would do that. ~ Queen Victoria

Oh! was ever woman so blessed as I am. ~ Queen Victoria

I love peace and quiet, I hate politics and turmoil. We women are not made for governing, and if we are good women, we must dislike these masculine occupations. ~ Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress. ~ V.S. Pritchett

We will rise up red as the dawn. ~ Victoria Aveyard

Anyone can betray anyone." -Red Queen ~ Victoria Aveyard

You will find as the children grow up that as a rule children are a bitter disappointment - their greatest object being to do precisely what their parents do not wish and have anxiously tried to prevent. ~ Queen Victoria

[On alcohol:] Total abstinence is an impossibility and ... it will not do to insist on it as a general practice ... ~ Queen Victoria

Since it has pleased Providence to place me in this station, I shall do my utmost to fulfil my duty towards my country; I am very young and perhaps in many, though not in all things, inexperienced, but I am sure that very few have more real good will and more real desire to do what is fit and right than I have. ~ Queen Victoria

We poor creatures are born for man's pleasure and amusement, and destined to go through endless sufferings and trials. ~ Queen Victoria

They don't know the meaning of danger or fear or pain. It's only their pride that can be truly hurt. ~ Victoria Aveyard

It's what I call common sense, properly understood,' replied Father Brown. 'It really is more natural to believe a preternatural story, that deals with things we don't understand, than a natural story that contradicts things we do understand. Tell me that the great Mr Gladstone, in his last hours, was haunted by the ghost of Parnell, and I will be agnostic about it. But tell me that Mr Gladstone, when first presented to Queen Victoria, wore his hat in her drawing-room and slapped her on the back and offered her a cigar, and I am not agnostic at all. That is not impossible; it's only incredible. But I'm much more certain it didn't happen than that Parnell's ghost didn't appear; because it violates the laws of the world I do understand. So it is with that tale of the curse. It isn't the legend that I disbelieve - it's the history. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I'd rather be free in Hell than in chains in America."--Victoria Woodhull in The Renegade Queen ~ Eva Flynn

The poor fatherless baby of eight months is now the utterly broken-hearted and crushed widow of forty-two! My life as a happy one is ended! the world is gone for me! If I must live on (and I will do nothing to make me worse than I am), it is henceforth for our poor fatherless children - for my unhappy country, which has lost all in losing him - and in only doing what I know and feel he would wish. ~ Queen Victoria

Calling someone a drama queen is so negative. Why not 'content creator'? ~ Lena Dunham

I used to do school plays. I never really took any acting classes. I'm just a natural ham, I guess. ~ Queen Latifah

How do you know which one's the queen?'
'She's bigger than the others,' said Mel.
'That doesn't always help,' Petey said, 'I can't always find her.'
'Because she's not that much bigger, said Mel. 'You don't rely on her size as much as you try to use the way she moves. It's hard to describe. It's as if she walks in a more determined way' She pulled off her hat and smoothed her long, straight hair. 'She's got a big job. Babies to bear. Workers to inspire. A colony to manage. She moves like that. Like she's a woman with a plan. The best way to see her is to let your eyes lose their focus, let things get a bit fuzzy on you. See the bees as a whole rather than individuals. When you do that, you understand the entire pattern. The queen's movements will stick out because they're so different from everyone else's. ~ Laura Ruby

This, then, was Katherine Victoria Lundy: pretty and patient and practical. Not lonely, because she had never really considered any way of being other than alone. Not gregarious, nor sullen, but somewhere in the middle, happy to speak when spoken to, happy also to carry on in silence, keeping her thoughts tucked quietly away. She was ordinary. She was remarkable.
Of such commonplace contradictions are weapons made. Katherine Lundy walked in the world. That was quite enough to set everything else into motion. ~ Seanan McGuire

I remember her, not a girl but the girl. The brains behind the all time top ten comic book vixens only wish they could conjure a a siren the likes of Susan Glenn, beneath my feet my own private earthquake registered an eight when Susan Glenn was near. In her presence all was beautiful before she arrived turned grotesque and in her shadows others became goblinesque, if she approached Susan Glenn she didn't walk she floated, accompanied by Pyrotechnics spectacals that left me feeling a foot tall. She embodied every desireable quality I have ever wanted. In my mind I was a peasant before a Queen. And so Susan Glenn and I were never a thing, if I could do it again, I'd do it differently. ~ Keifer Sutherland