Elizabeth I Queens Quotations

[On being told Mary, Queen of Scots, was taller than she:] Then she is too high, for I myself am neither too high nor too low.

[I]n the end this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a Queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin.

Though I am not imperial, and though Elizabeth may not deserve it, the Queen of England will easily deserve to have an emperor's son to marry.

There will never Queen sit in my seat with more zeal to my country, care to my subjects and that will sooner with willingness venture her life for your good and safety than myself. For it is my desire to live nor reign no longer than my life and reign shall be for your good. And though you have had, and may have, many princes more mighty and wise sitting in this seat, yet you never had nor shall have, any that will be more careful and loving.

[To Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, on his return from self-imposed exile, occasioned by the embarrassing flatulence he had experienced in the presence of the Queen:] My Lord, I had forgot the fart.

I will be as good unto ye as ever a Queen was unto her people. No will in me can lack, neither do I trust shall there lack any power. And persuade yourselves that for the safety and quietness of you all I will not spare if need be to spend my blood.

If I follow the inclination of my nature, it is this: beggar-woman and single, far rather than queen and married.

I do not so much rejoice that God hath made me to be a Queen, as to be a Queen over so thankful a people.

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.

I do not want a husband who honours me as a queen, if he does not love me as a woman.

As for my own part I care not for death, for all men are mortal; and 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 endowed with such qualities that if I were turned out of the realm in my petticoat I were able to live in any place in Christendom.

I would rather be a beggar and single than a queen and married.