King Henry 8 Quotes & Sayings

Queen Jane Seymour's epitaph, inscribed in Latin, translated roughly to:
Here lies Jane, a phoenix
Who died in giving another phoenix birth,
Let her be mourned, for birds like these
Are rare indeed. — Leslie Carroll

The King saw them with no common satisfaction, expressing his desire in no particular to have yt Stellar fish engraven and printed. We wish very much, Sir, yt you could procure for us a particular description of yesd Fish, viz. whether it be common there; what is observable in it when alive; what colour it then hath; what kind of motion in the water; what use it maketh of all that curious workmanship, wch Nature hath adorn'd it with? — Henry Oldenburg

Henry VIII, for example, who was king of England from 1509 to 1547, ended his days surrounded by a great many young people for the simple reason that he'd had most of his old courtiers exiled or executed. Between the years 1532 and 1540 alone, Henry ordered 330 political executions, probably more than any other ruler in British history. If you worked for Henry VIII, then you really didn't need to worry about putting money into your pension fund as you probably wouldn't live long enough to spend it. — John Connolly

It is magnificent. At the moment of impact, the king's eyes are open, his body braced for the atteint; he takes the blow perfectly, its force absorbed by a body securely armoured, moving in the right direction, moving at the right speed. His colour does not alter. His voice does not shake.
"Healthy?" he says. "Then I thank God for his favour to us. As I thank you, my lords, for this comfortable intelligence."
He thinks, Henry has been rehearsing. I suppose we all have.
The king walks away towards his own rooms. Says over his shoulder, "Call her Elizabeth. Cancel the jousts. — Hilary Mantel

Keep being a good boy and divorce Katherine. We should be grateful to King Henry the Eighth for that privilege. — S.A. David

If you want to do his soul good, why do you continually obstruct him? It hardly makes him a better man. Do you never think that, if you had bowed to the king's wishes years ago, if you had entered a convent and allowed him to remarry, he would never have broken with Rome? There would have been no need. Sufficient doubt was cast upon your marriage for you to retire with a good grace. You would have been honoured by all. But now the titles you cling to are empty. Henry was a good son of Rome. You drove him to this extremity. You, not he, split Christendom. And I expect that you know that, and that you think about it in the silence of the night. — Hilary Mantel

Okay, the question is, 'What enormously popular novel by William Peter Blatty, set in the posh Washington D.C. suburb of Georgetown, concerned the demonic possesion of a young girl?' '
'Johnny Cash', Henry replied.
'Jesus Christ!' Tricks Postino yelled. 'That's what you say to everythin! Johnny Cash, that's what you say to fuckin everythin!'
'Johnny Cash is everything,' Heny replied gravely... — Stephen King

Magic would not work on Henry. He was too stupid. — Stephen King

Henry said, and sat up. His hands clawed at the air, as if for holds which only Henry could see. His gouged eye leaked and dribbled; its bottom arc now bulged pregnantly down onto his cheek. He looked around, saw Eddie shrinking back against the wall, and tried — Stephen King

Giraldus claimed that he had heard about Eleanor's adultery with Geoffrey from the saintly Bishop Hugh of Lincoln, who had learned of it from Henry II of England, Geoffrey's son and Eleanor's second husband. Eleanor was estranged from Henry at the time Giraldus was writing, and the king was trying to secure an annulment of their marriage from the Pope. It would have been to his advantage to declare her an adulterous wife who had had carnal relations with his father, for that in itself would have rendered their marriage incestuous and would have provided prima facie grounds for its dissolution. — Alison Weir

I have to retain the illusion of things happening, I have to make Henry feel more and more intensely loved, I have to give him the belief that things are getting better and better because he is a king and all his life everyone has told him that he shall have the very best. He has been promised cream and gold and honey, I cannot give him 'wait.' How am I to keep going? How am I to do it?" I — Philippa Gregory

I would put forward a modest proposition that we were very much better governed by Henry VIII than we are by King Gordon. — David Starkey

Then there was David, lording it up at Buckingham Palace, thinking he was king of the shit heap. That guy was definitely nuts, like every dictator that had gone before him. Nero, Caligula, Henry the Eighth, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Margaret Thatcher, Colonel Gaddafi, that crazy North Korean bastard who was in Team America, Kim Jong whatever. — Charlie Higson

In that small [time] most greatly lived this star of England:
Fortune made his sword, By which the world's best garden he achiev'd
And left it to his son imperial lord.
Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown'd King
of France and England did this King succeed;
Whose state so many of had the managing,
That they lost France and made his England bleed. — William Shakespeare

Henry shuffled the jewelled insect back out of his pocket. It amber heart warmed light through the pit again. "Back in the lab, of course, as father dear tries to copy it with nonmagical parts. My mother told me to keep this one to remind me of what I am."
"And what is that?"
The bee illuminated both itself and Henry: its translucent wings, Henry's wickedly cut eyebrows.
"Something more. — Maggie Stiefvater

Two or three hours' walking will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. A single farmhouse which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the dominions of the King of Dahomey. — Henry David Thoreau

KING HENRY VI:
Would I were dead, if God's good will were so;
For what is in this world but grief and woe? — William Shakespeare

My favorite species to study would be Cobras and King Cobras which are two different families. They're very intelligent, and they're beautiful looking animals. Where they come from are countries and regions which I spend a lot of time in - South East Asia and India, those are places I go to fairly often, and so the cobras are my main interest. It's not a snake I can maintain, but when I see them in zoos and what not, I find them interesting. — Henry Rollins

Take Jesus for your king, and by baptism swear allegiance to him; take him for your prophet, and hear him; take him for your priest, to make atonement for you. — Matthew Henry

Which Cromwell was, as the chief engineer of Henry's Reformation. He crushed the Roman church, looted the monasteries and nationalized faith by subordinating clergy to king. That may flatter today's reflexive anticlericalism. But we do well to remember that the centralized state Cromwell helped midwife did prepare the ground, over the coming centuries, — Anonymous

He had never before thought of himself as gullible. He wondered where he had gone wrong. It occurred to him that he had let himself be overawed - by bishop Henry and his silk robes, by the magnificence of Winchester and its cathedral, by the piles of silver in the mint and the heaps of meat in the butchers' shops, and by the thought of seeing the king. He had forgotten that God saw through the silk robes to the sinful heart, that the only wealth worth having was treasure in heaven, and that the even the king had to kneel down in church. Feeling that everyone else was so much powerful and sophisticated than he was, he had lost sight of his true values, suspended his critical faculties, and places his trust in his superiors. — Ken Follett

Law is king of all. — Henry Alford

Well, do as you think best. That's every man's right and duty. But for me, I pledge you now I will not surrender one grain of my rights. What I took, I took and by God, I'll keep it, too. Take her home tomorrow, Archie, and never look back to watch what I do, for you know it before. I would not give him one knigh who had confided himself to me and none other, much less you. Only over my dead body," said Hotspur hardily, eye to eye with the friend he had made under Homildon Hill, "will King Henry ever claim you as his prisoner. — Edith Pargeter

Only eight months had gone since Henry VIII of England had been suspended in death, there to lie like Mohammed's coffin, hardly in the Church nor out of it, attended by his martyrs and the acidulous fivefold ghosts of his wives. King Francis of France, stranded by his neighbour's death in the midst of a policy so advanced, so brilliant and so intricate that it should at last batter England to the ground, and be damned to the best legs in Europe - Francis, bereft of these sweet pleasures, dwindled and died likewise. — Dorothy Dunnett

Because they will want me in Edinburgh to make sure that the Scottish king holds to the new alliance with England. They'll want me to hold him in friendship with Henry. They'll think that if I am queen in Scotland then James will never invade my son-in-law's kingdom." "And?" I whisper. "They're wrong," she says vengefully. "They're so very wrong. The day that I am Queen of Scotland with an army to command and a husband to advise, I won't serve Henry Tudor. I won't persuade my husband to keep a peace treaty with Henry. If I were strong enough and could command the allies I would need, I would march against Henry Tudor myself, come south with an army of terror. — Philippa Gregory

Uncle Henry can call cremation pagan if he wants to, but this open-coffin shit is the real pagan rite. She doesn't look like my mother, she looks like a stuffed rabbit. — Stephen King

Away with your president! We shall have a king ... the army will salute him as monarch; your militia will leave you and assist in making him king and fight against you. And what have you to oppose this force? What will then become of you and your rights? — Patrick Henry

They say that characters were engraven on the bathtub of king Tching-thang to this effect: 'renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again.' I can understand that. Morning brings back the heroic ages. — Henry David Thoreau

He is my brother," I said. "I cannot desert him."
"You can go to your own death," William said. "Or you can survive this, bring up your children, and guard Anne's little girl who will be shamed and bastardized and motherless by the end of this week. You can wait out this reign and see what comes next. See what the future holds for the Princess Elizabeth, defend our son Henry against those who will want to set him up as the king's heir or even worse-flaunt him as a pretender. You owe it to your children to protect them. — Philippa Gregory

Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven; To his feet thy tribute bring. Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, Who like me his praise should sing? — Henry Francis Lyte