Top 50 Alison Weir Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “If only they would all just leave me alone with my books and my letters, I would be content to let life, and the world pass me by.”

— Alison Weir

2. “I prefer to be left alone with my books.”

— Alison Weir

3. “A king was the Lord’s anointed, hallowed at his coronation with holy oil.”

— Alison Weir

5. “Who does not tremble when he considers how to deal with his wife?’ asked Henry VIII in his treatise A Defence of the Seven Sacraments; ‘for not only is he bound to love her, but so to live with her that he may return her to God pure and without stain, when God who gave shall demand His own again.’ Marriage.”

— Alison Weir

6. “Often, little brother, there is no smoke without fire.”

— Alison Weir

7. “I must bear it well as I may. As my sainted mother used to say, we never come to the kingdom of Heaven but by troubles.”

— Alison Weir

8. “Katherine of Aragon was a staunch but misguided woman of principle; Anne Boleyn an ambitious adventuress with a penchant for vengeance; Jane Seymour a strong-minded matriarch in the making; Anne of Cleves a good-humoured woman who jumped at the chance of independence; Katherine Howard an empty-headed wanton; and Katherine Parr a godly matron who was nevertheless all too human when it came to a handsome rogue.”

— Alison Weir

9. “Life was good, and already she understood that to be aware of happiness when you were actually feeling it, and not just in retrospect, was to be happy indeed.”

— Alison Weir

10. “An objective viewpoint was beyond her; she was single-minded to a fault.”

— Alison Weir

11. “Zionists exploited, exaggerated, invented, or even perpetrated “anti-Semitic” incidents both to procure support and to drive Jews to immigrate to the Zionist-designated homeland. A few examples are discussed below.”

— Alison Weir

12. “Only during courtship might a woman briefly gain the upper hand, as both Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour did, but woe betide her if she did not quickly learn to conform once the wedding-ring was on her finger. The.”

— Alison Weir

13. “You must pray to God for forgiveness because I can give you none.”

— Alison Weir

14. “As their forces broke, the Yorkist cavalrymen raced to the horse park behind their own lines and mounted their steeds to give chase. As they thundered past, the King and Warwick, flushed with victory, yelled, ‘Spare the commons! Kill the lords!’ Their words went unheeded.”

— Alison Weir

15. “Since mediaeval times, the King had been seen as two bodies in one: a mortal entity and “the King’s person,” representing unending royal authority; monarchs therefore referred to themselves in the plural form as “we.”

— Alison Weir

16. “Men, however, were encouraged to sow their wild oats, but a woman who did so became a social outcast and ruined her chances of making a good marriage.”

— Alison Weir

17. “But Anne was asking herself why being queen mattered so much, when the chance for true love was hers for the seizing. And always she came back to the argument that the crown was hers for the seizing too. She had never seen marriage alone as an especially fulfilling estate for women. She had always wanted more in life – and more than she had ever dreamed of would soon, God willing, be in her grasp. There was so much that she could accomplish as queen.”

— Alison Weir

18. “Kat embraced her, concealing her dismay as best she could. For these few months, fraught as they were, Elizabeth had been entirely hers again.”

— Alison Weir

19. “What she loved was being admired, being wanted, being pursued – but she did not think she wanted ever to be caught.”

— Alison Weir

20. “I cannot go with you all the way on your journey, but I would go as far as I might.”

— Alison Weir

21. “She had already decided that, when she grew up, she was going to do whatever she pleased and not let anyone order her about.”

— Alison Weir

22. “They inhabited a lost world of splendour and brutality, a world dominated by religious change, in which there were few saints.”

— Alison Weir

23. “It did not do to give your heart to a man so entirely, she thought. Men did not value what they came by easily. Once you loved, you laid yourself open to pain.”

— Alison Weir

24. “In one sphere above all others, Anne Boleyn still had the power to influence him, and that was in the case of church reform. Anne was a passionate and sincere evangelical, the owner of a library of controversial reformist literature, and she was sympathetic to radical and even Lutheran ideas.”

— Alison Weir

25. “Be well advised what ye put in his head, for ye shall never pull it out again.”

— Alison Weir

26. “In the South of England northerners were regarded then as uncouth, brutish, undisciplined savages...”

— Alison Weir

27. “Again, she may have made the equation that sexual involvement was inextricably linked with death.”

— Alison Weir

28. “His handsome face is suffused with rage. He stands before me shaking, then to my disgust, bursts into noisy tears; “I shall tell my mother of you!” he sobs and crashes out of the chamber.”

— Alison Weir

29. “News of the death of James V on 14 December gave even further cause for rejoicing, because his heir was a week-old girl, the infant Mary, Queen of Scots. Scotland would be subject to yet another weakening regency – it had endured six during the past 150 years – and should give no further trouble.”

— Alison Weir

30. “William had now to consolidate his victory and establish himself as king, but first he sent his messenger across the sea to Normandy to tell Matilda that she was now, by the grace of God, queen of England.”

— Alison Weir

31. “Matilda managed to present William with ten children, which she probably could not have done had she been just over four feet tall.”

— Alison Weir

32. “This obsession with death and suffering revealed itself in literature, poetry, art, and particularly in sculpture, with the appearance of cadaver tombs with an effigy of the deceased in life above, and another depicting his or her rotting corpse below – a grisly reminder of the end of all flesh.”

— Alison Weir

33. “If only the Fates had granted him a longer stay in this.”

— Alison Weir

34. “If a ruler suffers subjects to be ill-educated, and then punishes them for crimes they commit in their ignorance, what else can we conclude but that he first makes thieves and then punishes them!”

— Alison Weir

35. “How sad it was not to know how happy you were until it was too late.”

— Alison Weir

36. “This led to a lessening of confidence in the judicial system. Justice, it seemed, was available only to those who could pay enough to secure a ’right verdict.”

— Alison Weir

37. “If silences could be pregnant, then this one went to full term.”

— Alison Weir

38. “Was I right?” she asked him. “Was I right to make a stand against what I believed to be wrong? Even though many ills have come from it? I have been asking myself this a lot lately. I must be quiet in my conscience.”

— Alison Weir

39. “Each man was born to his degree, and a happy man was one who did not question his place in life.”

— Alison Weir

40. “The formal education of women was rarely considered important. Girls of good birth were taught domestic skills at home or in a convent, and rarely learned to read and write, for it was feared that if they did they would waste their talents writing love letters or reading romances that led to promiscuity.”

— Alison Weir

41. “At six o’clok the young King’s terrible sufferings finally ended. After his eyes had closed for the last time, the tempeste raged on. Later, superstitious folk claimed that Henry himself had sent it, and had risen from his grave in anger at the subversion of his will.”

— Alison Weir

42. “She was not so forbearing when it came to bad breath. After receiving one French envoy, she exclaimed, ‘Good God! What shall I do if this man stay here, for I smell him an hour after he has gone!’ Her words were reported back to the envoy, who at once betook himself back to France in shame.”

— Alison Weir

43. “He was not afraid, in fact he was content to go: So much that had been pleasurable in his life was now beyond his capacity, and that he could not bear.”

— Alison Weir

44. “From whom but the Devil did this advice come under which you are acting? Those who are urging you to repeat your former wrongdoings against an innocent person are seeking in this not your honour but their own convenience. They are clearly the enemies of your crown and the disturbers of your realm.”

— Alison Weir

45. “Until quite recently women’s histories were largely overlooked but in the wake of feminism there has been increasing interest in retrieving them.”

— Alison Weir

46. “There are too many Dudleys already in this world.”

— Alison Weir

47. “At Sandwich, in 1579, she paid the magistrates’ wives a great compliment when, without employing a food taster, she sampled some of the 160 dishes they had prepared for her and even ordered some to be taken to her lodgings so that she could eat them later.”

— Alison Weir

48. “We want men to admire us for our courage, our characters, and our intellect, not just our beauty.”

— Alison Weir

49. “Never reveal your hand, Anna,” he advised. “If my cap knew my mind, I would throw it into the fire.” It was one of the most revealing things he had ever said to her.”

— Alison Weir

50. “The King is dead. Long live the King! We must all offer allegiance to our new sovereign lord, King Edward the Fifth.”

— Alison Weir