Daughters of the Winter Queen Quotes

“She died early in the morning of February 13, 1662, at the age of sixty-five, one day shy of what would have been her forty-ninth wedding anniversary.”
― Nancy Goldstone, Daughters of the Winter Queen: Four Remarkable Sisters, the Crown of Bohemia, and the Enduring Legacy of Mary, Queen of Scots

“Thus did the twelfth child and youngest daughter in the female line descending from Mary, queen of Scots, married to the youngest of four brothers of a minor German principality, inherit what would become the throne of Great Britain. By some estimates as many as fifty-seven claimants by birth or sex had precedence over Sophia as heir. But this honor did not come solely by fate or luck. She had fought for it as surely as her mother had fought for Bohemia.”
― Nancy Goldstone, Daughters of the Winter Queen: Four Remarkable Sisters, the Crown of Bohemia, and the Enduring Legacy of Mary, Queen of Scots

“Philosophy is one of those subjects, like astrophysics and neurosurgery, that are not for the fainthearted. To delve into the absolutes of the human experience, to seek to advance the progress of enlightenment first expounded by the likes of the revered Aristotle and Plato, to search for the answers to the profound questions of the universe, often at the risk of deadly reprisal from entrenched powers, requires not only brilliance and tenacity but a deep sense of purpose. But even among this select fraternity, [René] Descartes stands out. From him did we get practical discoveries like coordinates in geometry and the law of refraction of light. But what he really did was to shake loose the human mind from the shackles of centuries of stultifying religious orthodoxy by creating an entirely original approach to reasoning: the Cartesian method.”
― Nancy Goldstone, Daughters of the Winter Queen: Four Remarkable Sisters, the Crown of Bohemia, and the Enduring Legacy of Mary, Queen of Scots

“it was Mary’s legacy that prevailed through the fearless person of her granddaughter Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen, and her four daughters, Princess Elizabeth, Louise Hollandine, Henrietta Maria, and Sophia. It is from the female line of this family that every English monarch beginning with George I, including the memorable Victoria and the indomitable Elizabeth II, all the way down to the wildly popular children born to the present-day duke and duchess of Cambridge, Prince William and Kate Middleton, has sprung in an unbroken line.”
― Nancy Goldstone, Daughters of the Winter Queen: Four Remarkable Sisters, the Crown of Bohemia, and the Enduring Legacy of Mary, Queen of Scots

“These women were not ahead of their time-they were their time. And that legacy-Mary's-endures.”
― Nancy Goldstone, Daughters of the Winter Queen: Four Remarkable Sisters, the Crown of Bohemia, and the Enduring Legacy of Mary, Queen of Scots