Katie McGrath Quotes

Some powerful people who were not emperors, yet were just as powerful as emperors, were followed by an entourage of officials

Essentially, Louis XIV created exclusivity. If we look at how we live our lives today, many of us are members of clubs or gyms. We search out exclusivity. He created the world of fashion at Versailles.

It's great to be queen!

Being queen is overrated.

The finest chroniclers of the great and the near-great have often been courtiers - the Duc de Saint-Simon, for instance, or Lady Murasaki.

Obviously I've had this fascination with aristocracy my whole life. Like, the kings and queens of 500 years ago... they're like rock stars. If there was a 'TMZ' 500 years ago, it would be about, like, Henry VIII and Marie Antoinette and all those people.

I spent a lot of time with a crown on my head.

Celebrity these days is completely for sale; it's not remotely mysterious. But there's something that remains glamorous and mysterious about royalty.

To understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be of the people.

It has always been the aim of royalty and aristocracy to lower the individual liberty and independence of the common people. A baron and a minute-man could not breathe the same air.

Never in a million years would I want to live at Versailles with Marie Antoinette or anybody else. I hate to tell you this but I did not even like visiting Versailles. I found it just too ornate. It was like a complete diet of cotton candy, marzipan, and whipped cream.

When Louis XIV assumed the reins of government France suddenly and wonderfully came to her maturity; it was as if the whole nation had burst into splendid flower.

Silver and ermine and red faces full of port wine.

The smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear.

Indeed, the existence of class, of social hierarchy, is as old as man himself. It prevails in the jungle where strength determines hierarchy; among men, it has also been savagely the same, whereby rulers vested with power through personal combat, or through lineal heritage as in the case of royalty, ravage their subjects.

I'm now the Lord of the Brighton Manor.

A court is an assembly of noble and distinguished beggars.

All shall equal be. The Earl, the Marquis, and the Dook, The Groom, the Butler, and the Cook, The Aristocrat who banks with Coutts, The Aristocrat who cleans the boots.

A kingdom knows no kindred.

Titles were symbols, just as impressive buildings were symbols, except that titles, unlike buildings, cost nothing.

The true grandeur and excellence of a prince ... does not consist in honors, in gold, in purple, and other luxuries of fortune, but in prudence, wisdom and knowledge.

One of the most constant laws of history is … immediately [if] any one class becomes preponderant—nobles, clergy, army, or the people—it speedily tends to enslave others.

You may rely upon one thing — I'll never engage in creating kings again; it's too great a strain.

There are two great enemies of thought and progress, the aristocracy of royalty and the aristocracy of gold.

The position of what is generally called great people has of late become extremely difficult. They are more attacked and calumniated, and judged with less indulgence than private individuals. What they have lost in this way, they have not by any means regained in any other. Ever since the revolution of 1790 they are much less secure than they used to be, and the transition from sovereign power to absolute want has been as frequent as sudden.