Cleopatra Egyptian Quotes & Sayings

THOMASINA:
But then the Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace with the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue! — Tom Stoppard

The Ptolemies were in fact Macedonian Greek, which makes Cleopatra approximately as Egyptian as Elizabeth Taylor. The word 'honey skinned' recurs in descriptions of her relatives and would presumably applied to hers as well, despite the inexactitudes surrounding her mother and paternal grandmother. There was certainly Persian blood in the family, but even an Egyptian mistress is a rarity among the Ptolemies. She was not dark skinned. — Stacy Schiff

Girls have always wanted to be pretty, even in Egyptian times. Cleopatra wore all that eyeliner, you know. — Rita Ora

For ten generations her family had styled themselves pharaohs. The Ptolemies were in fact Macedonian Greek, which makes Cleopatra approximately as Egyptian as Elizabeth Taylor. — Stacy Schiff

So maybe Third World discontent is fomented not merely by poverty, disease, corruption and political oppression but also by mere exposure to First World standards. The average Egyptian was far less likely to die from starvation, plague or violence under Hosni Mubarak than under Ramses II or Cleopatra. Never had the material condition of most Egyptians been so good. You'd think they would have been dancing in the streets in 2011, thanking Allah for their good fortune. Instead they rose up furiously to overthrow Mubarak. They weren't comparing themselves to their ancestors under the pharaohs, but rather to their contemporaries in the affluent West. — Yuval Noah Harari

While Egyptian speakers learned Greek, it was rare that anyone ventured in the opposite direction. To the punishing study of Egyptian, however, Cleopatra applied herself. She was allegedly the first and only Ptolemy to bother to learn the language of the 7 million people over whom she ruled. — Stacy Schiff

When Cleopatra was nine or ten, a visiting official had accidentally killed a cat, an animal held sacred in Egypt.* A furious mob assembled, with whom Auletes' representative attempted to reason. While this was a crime for an Egyptian, surely a foreigner merited a special exemption? He could not save the visitor from the bloodthirsty crowd. — Stacy Schiff

[At Marc Antony's tomb:] Nothing could part us in life, but now in death we are likely to change places, you the Roman lying here in Egyptian soil, and I, helpless woman that I am, being buried in Italy. — Cleopatra