Elizabeth I Quotations

who seeketh two strings to one bow, they may shoot strong, but never straight ...

It has been always held for a special principle in friendship that prosperity provideth but adversity proveth friends ...

I have never been able to be so allured by the prospect of advantages or so terrified by misfortunes, swayed by honours or fettered by affection, nay not even so smitten by the fear of death, as to enter upon marriage.

[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.

Hang Irish harpers wherever found.

I am more afraid of making a fault in my Latin than of the Kings of Spain, France, Scotland, the whole House of Guise, and all of their confederates.

They best pass over the world who trip over it quickly; for it is but a bog. If we stop, we sink.

O Fortune, how thy restless, wavering state has fraught with cares my troubled wit!

I pluck up the good lissome herbs of sentences by pruning, eat them by reading, digest them by musing, and lay them up at length in the high seat of memory.

[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.