Victoria The Queen Quotes

“It has been conservatively estimated that Victoria wrote an average of two and a half thousand words per day during her reign, a total of approximately sixty million words.”
― Julia Baird, Victoria The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“Victoria’s head ached under a heavy crown, and her hand throbbed—the ruby coronation ring had been jammed onto the wrong finger; it was later, painfully, removed with ice. Around her stood her older male advisers, in a state of disrepair. Her prime minister was half-stoned with opium and brandy, ostensibly taken to calm his stomach, and he viewed the entire ceremony in a fog. Her archbishop, having failed to rehearse, jumbled his lines. One of her lords tumbled down the steps when he approached to kiss her hand. But Victoria’s composure was impeccable. Her voice was cool, silvery, and steady.”
― Julia Baird, Victoria The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“the top hat was now considered the mark of a gentleman, even though the first man to sport one in public, forty years earlier, was arrested on the grounds that it had “a shiny luster calculated to alarm timid people.” (Four women had fainted upon seeing it, and pedestrians had booed.) Lord”
― Julia Baird, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman who Changed the World

“a girl who was bullied by those closest to her until her determination set like concrete;”
― Julia Baird, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“on June 20, 1837, the destiny of a nation wheeled, spun, and came to rest on the small frame of an eighteen-year-old girl. A girl who read Charles Dickens, worried about the welfare of Gypsies, adored animals, loved to sing opera, was fascinated with lion tamers, and hated insects and turtle soup; a girl who was bullied by those closest to her until her determination set like concrete; a girl whose heart was wound tight with cords of sentiment and stoicism.”
― Julia Baird, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“young, old, British or foreign, the entire”
― Julia Baird, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman who Changed the World

“court circles too. Melbourne was now fully aware of the rift, even though the duchess had begged Victoria not to tell him, but did nothing to bridge it. Victoria started to pity her depressed mother. It was a fool’s mission, but the loyal duchess continued to try to rehabilitate Conroy. In November, she asked Victoria to allow him to come to the Guildhall banquet. If Victoria did not like him, then she asked her to “at least forgive, and do not exclude and mark him and his family.” She continued: “The”
― Julia Baird, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“sent clothes for the refugees and lent them”
― Julia Baird, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“When Victoria was born, food was cooked in open fireplaces, horses carried messages, half of the population was illiterate, and a narrow band of property owners were the only ones with political power. By the end of her life in 1901, people traveled by subway, telegraphs shot messages across oceans, education was compulsory, and women had some basic rights.”
― Julia Baird, Victoria The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“Germany was then a collection of states that had been bundled together in a union called the German Confederation in 1815 after Napoleon was defeated. (The country would not exist as one nation until 1871.) Some of the states had sided with France in the Napoleonic Wars, but the largest and most powerful—Prussia—was allied with England. One small state, Hanover, was, oddly, ruled from London by the English kings, who were Hanoverian by heritage.”
― Julia Baird, Victoria The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“any breaches”
― Julia Baird, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“Both had lost parents at an early age, and while Albert did not have a rift with his father as Victoria did with her mother, both ached for an idyllic domesticity they had dreamed of as children.”
― Julia Baird, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“(As he once told her, “a long closely connected train of reasoning is like a beautiful strain of music.”)”
― Julia Baird, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“The charge of the Light Brigade was forever memorialized as a moment of glorious sacrifice, as needless slaughters ordered by shortsighted generals so often are.”
― Julia Baird, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“brain, as men did. Cassandra was, of course, Florence Nightingale. She wrote: Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity, and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised?…Now, why is it more ridiculous for a man than for a woman to do worsted work and drive out every day in the carriage? Why should we laugh if we were to see a panel of men sitting around a drawing room table in the morning, and think it all right if they were women? Is man’s time more valuable than women’s?…Women”
― Julia Baird, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire