The Royal Diaries Quotes

What is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh. ~ Kathryn Lasky

There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art. ~ Anthony Trollope

Then all the winds of Heaven ran to join hands and bend a shoulder, to bring down to me the sound of a noble hymn that was heavy with the perfume of Time That Has Gone.
The glittering multitudes were singing most mightily, and my heart was in blood to hear a Voice that I knew.
The Men of the Valley were marching again.
My Fathers were singing up there.
Loud, triumphant, the anthem rose, and I knew, in some deep place within, that in the royal music was a prayer to lift up my spirit, to be of good cheer, to keep the faith, that Death was only an end to the things that are made of clay, and to fight, without heed of wounds, all that brings death to the Spirit, with Glory to the Eternal Father, forever, Amen. ~ Richard Llewellyn

Where was the bloodied boy who'd collapsed on her bedroom floor?

Where was the tortured magician, veins turning black as he fought a talisman's pull?

Where was the sad, lonely royal who'd stood on the dock and watched her walk away? ~ V.E Schwab

The city of Gloucester, by ancient custom, presented a lamprey pie to the sovereign at Christmas time, as a token of loyalty. Lampreys are scaleless freshwater sucker-fish resembling eels, desirable in the past for their oily, gamey flesh. The tradition of gifting lamprey pies to the royal family continued until the end of Queen Victoria's reign, but was revived for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 when a 42-pound pie was cooked by the RAF catering crops. ~ Janet Clarkson

Oh, I know my family's not of royal blood, but you needn't throw it in my face all the time. ~ Robert N. Lee

Be loyal to the royal that is in you, for you are the child of a King. ~ Harold B. Lee

Patriotism," said Lymond, "like honesty is a luxury with a very high face value which is quickly pricing itself out of the spiritual market altogether.

[...] It is an emotion as well, and of course the emotion comes first. A child's home and the ways of its life are sacrosanct, perfect, inviolate to the child. Add age; add security; add experience. In time we all admit our relatives and our neighbours, our fellow townsmen and even, perhaps, at last our fellow nationals to the threshold of tolerance. But the man living one inch beyond the boundary is an inveterate foe.

[...] Patriotism is a fine hothouse for maggots. It breeds intolerance; it forces a spindle-legged, spurious riot of colour.… A man of only moderate powers enjoys the special sanction of purpose, the sense of ceremony; the echo of mysterious, lost and royal things; a trace of the broad, plain childish virtues of myth and legend and ballad. He wants advancement - what simpler way is there? He's tired of the little seasons and looks for movement and change and an edge of peril and excitement; he enjoys the flowering of small talents lost in the dry courses of daily life. For all these reasons, men at least once in their lives move the finger which will take them to battle for their country.…

"Patriotism," said Lymond again. "It's an opulent word, a mighty key to a royal Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. Patriotism; loyalty; a true conviction that of all the troubled and striving world, the soil o ~ Dorothy Dunnett

The heroes of obtrusiveness, people with whom no soldier would lie down in the trenches, though he has to submit to being interviewed by them, break into recently abandoned royal castles so that they can report, "We got there first!" It would be far less shameful to be paid for committing atrocities than for fabricating them. ~ Karl Kraus

I wonder," said Mr. Lorry, pausing in his looking about, "that he keeps that reminder of his sufferings about him!" "And why wonder at that?" was the abrupt inquiry that made him start. It proceeded from Miss Pross, the wild red woman, strong of hand, whose acquaintance he had first made at the Royal George Hotel at Dover, and had since improved. ~ Charles Dickens

Sin has sprung from a royal though evil stock, and if it be in the heart, it will struggle for the throne. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I swear you don't know how to have any fun at all," I teased.
"This is not exactly my idea of it," he said wryly.
I gestured toward the ballroom. "But you're royal. It's your kind of party. You should be relaxed, letting everyone suck up to you."
He laughed and my chest tightened. God, I loved that sound.
"Kendra, not everything about being royal is enjoyable."
"So what would you consider fun?" I asked, curious.
Tristan was obviously well-liked and respected. But I'd never seen him when he wasn't in either instructor, gardinel, or prince mode. I got the feeling he wasn't very social and spent a lot of time alone.
His eyes turned thoughtful. "Relaxing in a quiet room with a nice glass of scotch, listening to Bach."
I rolled my eyes. "Are you serious, grandpa?"
He hid a smile. ~ Emma Raveling

The captain was amusing. He said that he himself couldn't draw and proved his words by drawing his own house for his prisoner to see. It was just such a house as the babies drew in the kindergarten: a square box with four square windows, a door and two chimneys, each with a neat curl of smoke. "That's best I can do," said the Captain, laughing.
Max laughed with him for politeness' sake, though inwardly he was shocked that an important man like the Captain made a fool of himself. "Vater does not draw," he said kindly, "nor does Mutti; but they are both very keen on photography. Perhaps you are good at that?"
"Not brilliant," said the Captain. ~ Constance Savery

The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we produce, whether we know it or not, is a mongrel mouthful of Chaucerian, Shakespearean, Miltonic, Johnsonian, Dickensian and American. Military, naval, legal, corporate, criminal, jazz, rap and ghetto discourses are mingled at every turn. The French language, like Paris, has attempted, through its Academy, to retain its purity, to fight the advancing tides of Franglais and international prefabrication. English, by comparison, is a shameless whore. ~ Stephen Fry

Since mediaeval times, the King had been seen as two bodies in one: a mortal entity and "the King's person," representing unending royal authority; monarchs therefore referred to themselves in the plural form as "we. ~ Alison Weir

Cixi's lack of formal education was more than made up for by her intuitive intelligence, which she liked to use from her earliest years. In 1843, when she was seven, the empire had just finished its first war with the West, the Opium War, which had been started by Britain in reaction to Beijing clamping down on the illegal opium trade conducted by British merchants. China was defeated and had to pay a hefty indemnity.

Desperate for funds, Emperor Daoguang (father of Cixi's future husband) held back the traditional presents for his sons' brides – gold necklaces with corals and pearls – and vetoed elaborate banquets for their weddings. New Year and birthday celebrations were scaled down, even cancelled, and minor royal concubines had to subsidise their reduced allowances by selling their embroidery on the market through eunuchs. The emperor himself even went on surprise raids of his concubines' wardrobes, to check whether they were hiding extravagant clothes against his orders. As part of a determined drive to stamp out theft by officials, an investigation was conducted of the state coffer, which revealed that more "than nine million taels of silver had gone missing.

Furious, the emperor ordered all the senior keepers and inspectors of the silver reserve for the previous forty-four years to pay fines to make up the loss – whether or not they were guilty.

Cixi's great-grandfather had served as one of the keepers and his share of the fine amoun ~ Jung Chang

If you look at most of the Royal Houses in Europe, the inbreeding was pretty outstanding. ~ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

It was full of dead Prussian Guards, big men, and dead Royal Welch Fusiliers and South Wales Borderers, little men. Not a single tree in the wood remained unbroken. ~ Phil Carradice

Cruelty to animals is cruelty and a vile thing; but cruelty to a man is not cruelty, it is treason. Tyranny over a man is not tyranny, it is rebellion, for man is royal. Now, the practical weakness of the vast mass of modern pity for the poor and the oppressed is precisely that it is merely pity; the pity is pitiful, but not respectful. Men feel that the cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is injustice to equals; nay, it is treachery to comrades. This dark scientific pity, this brutal pity, has an elemental sincerity of its own; but it is entirely useless for all ends of social reform. Democracy swept Europe with the sabre when it was founded upon the Rights of Man. It has done literally nothing at all since it has been founded only upon the wrongs of man. Or, more strictly speaking, its recent failure has been due to its not admitting the existence of any rights, or wrongs, or indeed of any humanity. Evolution (the sinister enemy of revolution) does not especially deny the existence of God; what it does deny is the existence of man. And all the despair about the poor, and the cold and repugnant pity for them, has been largely due to the vague sense that they have literally relapsed into the state of the lower animals. ~ G.K. Chesterton

The city of Granada, so gloriously provided with architectural reminders of its Islamic heritage, was particularly anxious to show that it was a more ancient and distinguished Christian centre than Toledo or Santiago de Compostela, and it also wanted to outface the upstart royal capital Madrid. These aims were much assisted by the 'discovery' from 1588 onwards of a series of forged early Christian relics (plomos, or lead books) hidden in the minaret of the former main Granadan mosque and in various nearby caves. ~ Diarmaid MacCulloch

I've minded my manners, I've stayed noble, but when it comes to taking her in the bedroom, all of that is gone. I won't be royal. I'll be a savage instead. ~ Karina Halle

I left that church with rich and royal hatred of the priest as a person, and a loathing for the church as an institution, and I vowed that I would never go inside a church again.
[Eugene V. Debs, describing his teenage reaction to a hellfire lecture by a priest] ~ Eugene V. Debs

Dance with the one who brung ya. ~ Darrell Royal

Architecture is the printing-press of all ages, and gives a history of the state of the society in which it was erected, from the cromlech of the Druids to those toy-shops of royal bad taste ~ Sydney, Lady Morgan

Well, that night we had our show; but there warn't only about twelve people there – just enough to pay expenses. And they laughed all the time, and that made the duke mad; and everybody left, anyway, before the show was over, but one boy which was asleep. So the duke said these Arkansaw lunkheads couldn't come up to Shakespeare; what they wanted was low comedy – and maybe something ruther worse than low comedy, he reckoned. He said he could size their style. So next morning he got some big sheets of wrapping paper and some black paint, and drawed off some handbills, and stuck them up all over the village. The bills said:

AT THE COURT HOUSE!
FOR 3 NIGHTS ONLY!
The World-Renowned Tragedians
DAVID GARRICK THE YOUNGER!
AND
EDMUND KEAN THE ELDER!
Of the London and Continental Theatres,
In their Thrilling Tragedy of
THE KING'S CAMELEOPARD,
OR
THE ROYAL NONESUCH ! ! !
Admission 50 cents.
Then at the bottom was the biggest line of all, which said:

LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED.
"There," says he, "if that line don't fetch them, I don't know Arkansaw! ~ Mark Twain

I stare at the water. He stares at me. I can feel his gaze burning into my face, and I shift my head again, smiling wryly.

"Let's hear it."

"Hear what?"

"Some more lies. You know, how last night was just you doing me a favor, you don't really want me, yada, yada." I wave my hand.

To my surprise, he laughs.

"Oh my God. Was that a laugh? Reed Royal laughs, folks. Someone call the Vatican because an honest-to-God miracle has occurred."

That gets me another chuckle. "You're so annoying," he grumbles.

"Yeah, but you still like me."

He goes quiet. I think he's going to stay that way, but then he curses under his breath and says, "Yeah, maybe I do."

I feign amazement. "Two miracles in one night? Is the world ending? ~ Erin Watt, Paper Princess

I turn my head and stare out the casement window at the royal gardens instead, wet and slippery and dark as the center of a body, where the roses twitch an extinguished red. ~ Alexandra Kleeman

Rhy felt Alucard's eyes wandering slowly, hungrily, over him, and he blushed. The heat started in his face and spread down, through his collar, his chest, beneath shirt and belt. It was disconcerting; Rhy might not have magic, but when it came to conquests, he was used to holding the power - things happened at his whim, and at his pleasure. Now he felt that power falter, slip. In all of Ames, there was only one person capable of flustering the prince, of reducing him from a proud royal to a nervous youth, and that was Alucard Emery. Misfit. Rogue. Privateer. And royal. ~ Victoria Schwab

Kien exhaled his relief. Until he saw the welcoming committee.
Bryce and Prill rushed toward Ela and Kien, exultant. Followed by Lorteus, the royal fightmaster. An unpleasant grin widened in Lorteus' battered face, and his voice grated harsh in Kien's ears. "Welcome sir! I've been sent ahead by order of our king to direct your recovery-seeing's how you nearly died by failing to heed my lessons. Good of his majesty, isn't it?"
Oh yes. Killing good. Kien rested a hand on the Azurnite sword-just in case-and he managed to look stern. "Fine. But not now Lorteus!"
"Of course not, sir' Lorteus agreed flatly. "Tonight, I clean the weapons. At dawn, I'll fetch you for work-to overcome your failure. Be ready."
As Ela linked her arm in his, Kien hissed, "He's going to kill me!"
"Hmm." Ela smiled and hugged him while they crossed the courtyard. "We think he's already done some good, sir. You're walking faster now. ~ R.J. Larson

Wyndham's is a beautiful old theatre. The sensation on the stage isn't as different as you might think from the Royal Court. ~ Sophie Thompson

People settle for so much less because they find their identities in the world's fickle and untrue opinions. God made you royal with His blood. Live. ~ Lacey Mosley

It was natural that the direct wielders of the royal prerogative, men who sat in the Star Chamber and the Privy Council, who knew the secrets of the State and the necessity for prompt action, should despise the merely declaratory character of a good deal of Common Law process. To them we doubtless owe those four great pillars of Chancery jurisdiction, the injunction, the decree, the sequestration, and the commission of rebellion. ~ Edward Jenks

If he gets any more charming, men and women may start laying down in the street for the privilege of being stepped on by the new Ravkan King. However did you resist him?"
"Good question," Mal murmured from beside me.
"Turns out I don't care for emeralds," I said.
Zoya rolled her eyes. "Or royal blood, blinding charisma, tremendous wealth
"
"You can stop now," said Mal. ~ Leigh Bardugo

I'm a pro! No, what I mean is I have performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company in England. I have been all over the place. I have studied theatre for seven years. ~ Kunal Nayyar

Love was dangerous. It made one too vulnerable, too open to the pain of loss and betrayal. ~ Lauren Royal

With some difficulty she persuaded the Dauphin, and with no difficulty whatsoever she persuaded his younger brother to take her on a secret visit. From her hairdresser she had heard about "Opera balls"--balls in Paris where the people wore masks and no one knew who anyone else was. So the three royal youngsters ordered a carriage for late at night, dressed up in play costumes which Marie Antoinette got together for them, an drove to Paris. There they went to an "Opera ball. ~ Bernardine Kielty

I've been very near death. And you can't imagine the wild elation of those moments- it's the sudden glimpse of the absurdity of life that brings it- when one meets death face to face. The Royal Way (1935) ~ Andre Malraux

Course, I always knew you were a royal. Just didn't know it went past the pain-in-the-ass part. ~ J.R. Ward

It is constantly assured, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is - Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? That is the problem the Church attempted; that is the miracle she achieved. ~ G.K. Chesterton

The games haven't even started yet and already there are people complaining about the horrible accommodations at the Sochi Olympic village. Toilets don't flush. The faucets spew discolored water. They say it's like being on a Royal Caribbean cruise. ~ Jay Leno

When I graduated from high school, I had artistic and academic scholarships, and I was trying to figure out what to do. I decided to audition for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Juilliard and the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney, Australia. ~ Deborah Kara Unger

Who then," she continues, "tells a finer tale than any of us? Silence does. And where does one read a deeper tale than upon the most perfectly printed page of the most precious book? Upon the blank page. When a royal and gallant pen, in the moment of its highest inspiration, has written down its tale with the rarest ink of all -- where, then, may one read a still deeper, sweeter, merrier and more cruel tale than that? Upon the blank page. ~ Isak Dinesen

Those who have never been to the edge and looked over will never understand that it is better to live one day as a lion than a lifetime as a sheep. The ones that been to the edge know that hard times don't last forever, but hard men do. ~ British Royal Marines

All things considered, Her Grace's plan may not have been the single rashest, most foolhardy, do-or-die, all-or-nothing throw of the dice in the history of the Royal Manticoran - or Grayson - Navy. If it wasn't, however, I have so far failed to find the plan that was. ~ David Weber