The Elizabethan World Quotes

“The rose is red, the leaves are green. God save Elizabeth, our noble queen.”
― Lacey Baldwin Smith, The Elizabethan World

“Legend reports that Gloriana did not even take kindly to that most dangerous of mechanical devices, the flush toilet, and though she thanked its inventor, she preferred more tried-and-true methods of sanitation.”
― Lacey Baldwin Smith, The Elizabethan World

“Elizabeth saw that in politics, problems are rarely solved; they are only replaced by other, more pressing ones.”
― Lacey Baldwin Smith, The Elizabethan World

“The queen was the first to admit she was no angel, for her sins were manifold, and in the quiet of her chapel, she even confessed the possibility that she was “unworthy of eternal life, if not of the royal dignity.”
― Lacey Baldwin Smith, The Elizabethan World

“Henry VII was “full of notes,” and with infinite care he initialed each page of the exchequer accounts and amassed a comfortable surplus in the treasury.”
― Lacey Baldwin Smith, The Elizabethan World

“Christopher Columbus could greedily avow before those Most Catholic Monarchs of Spain that “gold is most excellent - with gold is treasure made; he who has it can do whatever he wants.”
― Lacey Baldwin Smith, The Elizabethan World

“They moved to the new centers of trade and prospered, because they lived by the standard that “conscience is a pretty thing to carry to Church,” but he who “pursueth it in fair market or shop may die a beggar.”
― Lacey Baldwin Smith, The Elizabethan World

“The harbingers of change were feared and hated because they advocated exactly those practices and doctrines most deplored by the defenders of the medieval way of life. On all sides, the antithesis of the Christian doctrine of moderation seemed to be triumphant: excessive concern with money among capitalistic venturers, inordinate and unscrupulous power exercised by the New Monarchs, immoderate religious sensibilities in the persons of Martin Luther and his disciples, and above all, a satanic view of life in which man became not only the measure of all things but the equal of God Himself.”
― Lacey Baldwin Smith, The Elizabethan World

“Cathedrals became houses of light, not of God, monuments to man’s architectural inspiration, where humanity worshiped its own ingenuity and not God’s presence.”
― Lacey Baldwin Smith, The Elizabethan World

“Whether the Vatican by 1499 had become the sewer of the world, as it was later claimed, is debatable, but certainly religion and morality were parting company, the former degenerating into a business and the latter all but disappearing from the Church.”
― Lacey Baldwin Smith, The Elizabethan World

“A careful regulation of the economic impulses of society was considered as essential to man’s spiritual welfare as it was to his material well-being. There was a righteous price in commerce, based on considerations of morality, as well as an economic price, reflecting the laws of supply and demand.”
― Lacey Baldwin Smith, The Elizabethan World

“Why is our life so cruel and dark That men no longer speak to friend? Why does evil so clearly mark The monstrous government of men? Compare what is with what is past And see how fraud and sorrow stand, While law and justice fade so fast That I know no longer where I am.”
― Lacey Baldwin Smith, The Elizabethan World