Quotes & Sayings About Versailles

Blue had always struck her as such a serene, soothing color, yet all social media offered was endless agitation and posturing. It was worse than the court of Versailles. — Deborah Harkness

Little by little, the old world crumbled, and not once did the king imagine that some of the pieces might fall on him. — Jennifer Donnelly

As a consequence of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the officer corps of the old army became part of this class, as did that part of the younger generation who, in the old Germany, would have become officers or civil servants. — Gustav Stresemann

I felt a tightening in my chest, a sharp spike of intense sadness-almost like nostalgia, except it was for a life I never had. — Katie Alender

In other words, every cent the French government spent on guns for the Americans was another centime it would not have to spend on butter for the starving peasants who would one day storm Versailles. — Sarah Vowell

look as if they had been plucked from the Palace of Versailles or a Jacobean mansion - that you were aboard a ship being propelled far into the bluest reaches of the ocean. — Erik Larson

The Second World War took place not so much because no one won the First, but because the Versailles Treaty did not acknowledge this truth. — Paul Johnson

I would point out that Japan's proposal at the Versailles Peace Conference on the principle of racial equality was rejected by delegates such as those from Britain and the United States. — Hideki Tojo

This Prince of the Church reserved one of his rooms for cats, where overseers fed them chicken pates twice a day. When he died the overseers and cats were provided for.Cardinal Richelieu, who had dozens of cats, built a cattery at Versailles in which to house them. — Cardinal Richelieu

Touching him again reminded her of Versailles.She wanted to thank him for saving her from marrying the king. And to beg him never to hurt himself again as he'd done in Tibet. She wanted to ask what he'd dreamed about when he'd slept for days after she'd died in Prussia. She wanted to hear what he'd said to Luschka right before she died that awful night in Moscow. She wanted to pour out her love, and break down and cry,and let him know that every second of every lifetime she'd ben through,she had missed him with all her heart. — Lauren Kate

Nationalist conflicts and ethnic-racial tensions were greatly intensified by the territorial settlement of Europe that followed the First World War. The architects of the Versailles Treaty in 1919, however good their intentions, faced insuperable problems in attempting to satisfy the territorial demands of the new countries formed out of the wreckage of the old empires. Ethnic minorities formed sizeable parts of most of the new states in central, eastern and south-eastern Europe, offering a potential base for serious political disturbance. Almost — Ian Kershaw

It is hard to imagine Andre Le Notre laying out the exquisite landscape designs for Vaux-le-Vicomte, and later the magnificent Chateau de Versailles, with no high hill to stand on, no helicopter to fly in, and no drone to show him the complexities of the terrain. Yet he did, and with extreme precision, accuracy, and high style. — Martha Stewart

Packy watched her walk away, her perfect heart-shaped rear end testing the confines of her tight black dress. There was a God. Packy was now certain of it. How else could such heart-stopping beauty be accounted for? Such a thing could not be the product of a random universe. A flower, maybe. A rainbow, perhaps. But not Venus Versailles. — Quentin R. Bufogle

Why should this war in the West be fought for the restoration of Poland? The Poland of the Versailles Treaty will never rise again. — Adolf Hitler

Visitors are informed, but what do they feel? I can't find the warmth of Versailles in such blandness, and I don't think tourist come here in search of information at all. The bus-loads of Japanese tourists and honest grandmothers don't visit the Queen's bedroom to learn about the particular type of canopy bed she slept in or the sort of wood it is made from; they come to relive a moment in the queen's life. — Alain Baraton

I have the nagging sense that my true friends are waiting for me, beyond college, unusual women whose ambitions are as big as their past transgressions, whose hair is piled high, dramatic like topiaries at Versailles, and who never, ever say "too much information" when you mention a sex dream you had about your father. — Lena Dunham

It is easier for me to take ten good pictures in an airplane bathroom than in the gardens at Versailles. — Sally Mann

Pendants have for two thousand years reiterated the notion that women have a more lively spirit, men more solidity; that women have more delicacy in their ideas and men greater power of attention. A Paris idler who once took a walk in the Versailles Gardens concluded that, judging from all he saw, the trees grow ready trimmed. — Stendhal

In this autumn of 1919, in which I write, we are at the dead season of our fortunes. — John Maynard Keynes

They could not help loving anything that made them laugh. The Lisbon earthquake was "embarrassing to the physicists and humiliating to theologians" (Barbier). It robbed Voltaire of his optimism. In the huge waves which engulfed the town, in the chasms which opened underneath it, in volcanic flames which raged for days in the outskirts, some 50,000 people perished. But to the courtiers of Louis XV it was an enormous joke. M. de Baschi, Madame de Pompadour's brother-in-law, was French Ambassador there at the time. He saw the Spanish Ambassador killed by the arms of Spain, which toppled onto his head from the portico of his embassy; Baschi then dashed into the house and rescued his colleague's little boy whom he took, with his own family, to the country. When he got back to Versailles he kept the whole Court in roars of laughter for a week with his account of it all. "Have you heard Baschi on the earthquake? — Nancy Mitford

It was like the first time I visited Versailles. There was an eerieness, like I'd been there before. I don't know if I was Louis XIV or Marie Antoinette or a lowly groundskeeper, but I lived there. — Maurice Minnifield

I had always been a great talker and teller of tales.
'You should put a lock on that tongue of yours. It's long enough and sharp enough to slit your own throat,' our guardian warned me, the night before I left home to go to the royal court at Versailles ... I just laughed. 'Don't you know a woman's tongue is her sword? You wouldn't want me to let my only weapon rust, would you? — Kate Forsyth

The Nazis' entrance upon the European stage did not, at first, alarm the British. After all, under the Versailles treaty,the size of the German army and navy was limited and the defeated country was forbidden to maintain air force. The wake-up bell began sounding only when, in March 1935, Hitler renounced the treaty and declared that his country would indeed rebuild its military. The following year, when Germany reoccupied the Rhineland, Britons were unsettled to learn that his army was already three times the legal size ad that his air force, or Luftwaffe, would surpass their own. — Madeleine K. Albright

Courtly manners are contagious; they are caught at Versailles. — Jean De La Bruyere

After 15 years of work I have achieved, as a common German soldier and merely with my fanatical willpower, the unity of the German nation, and have freed it from the death sentence of Versailles. — Adolf Hitler

I'm interested in power. I'm interested in the kind of polarities and equilibriums that take place within sexuality and philosophy and sociology. So in Versailles, in this type of setting, you have a place that is about absolute control, where everything has been thought about. — Jeff Koons

Idealism that makes no distinction between areas where our national interest lies and those from which it is remote does no good for America. The weariness of the post-Versailles, post-Korea, post-Vietnam eras is never far from the national mood. — Dick Morris

Jay: Looks like you misspelled the Treaty of Versailles.
Sara: Yeah, well. My brother's natural ability for languages didn't rub off on me.
Jay: ... I'm not talking about Versailles. I have no idea if you spelled that right. I'm talking about the word 'treaty. — Tracy Bilen

The love of Louis XVI for mechanical works is well known. He had a little workshop at Versailles where he amused himself making locks, assisted by Francois Gamain, to whom he was much attached and with whom he spent many hours in projecting and executing mechanical contrivances. — Sabine Baring-Gould

Versailles has only existed for seven years. It does not have any ancient traditions. It was made by Colbert, the commoner. It is full of nobles, true; but you fool yourself if you believe that they feel comfortable there - feel as if they belong. No, it is you, mademoiselle, who are the perfect courtier of Versailles, you whom the others shall envy, once you go there and establish yourself. My father feels himself slipping down, sees his family losing its wealth, its influence. He throws a rope up, hoping that someone on higher and firmer ground will snatch it out of the air and pull him to safety - and that someone is you, mademoiselle. — Neal Stephenson

It was my dream, and probably the dream of every one of us, to bring about a revision of the Versailles Treaty by peaceful means, which was provided for in that very treaty. — Hans Frank

Compare the scale and magnifcence of Versailles with St James's - the brick-built hovel in which the 18th-century kings of England lived. What was then the most powerful monarchy in the world housed its sovereigns in a converted leper hospital, yet, at the same time, parliament provided the magnificent palaces of Chelsea and Greenwich as hospitals for retired soldiers and sailors. — David Starkey

For the first time since hearing about the Treaty of Versailles in detail, Mondaugen found himself crying. They'll drain his juices, he thought; caress his bones with their paw-pads, gag on his fine white hair. — Anonymous

Love is all very well; but there must be something else to go with it. The useless must be mingled with happiness. Happiness is only the necessary. Season that enormously with the superfluous for me. A palace and her heart. Her heart and the Louvre. Her heart and the grand waterworks of Versailles. Give me my shepherdess and try to make her a duchess. Fetch me Phyllis crowned with corn-flowers, and add a hundred thousand francs income. Open for me a bucolic perspective as far as you can see, beneath a marble colonnade. I consent to the bucolic and also to the fairy spectacle of marble and gold. Dry happiness resembles dry bread. One eats, but one does not dine. I want the superfluous, the useless, the extravagant, excess, that which serves no purpose. — Victor Hugo

I live in, literally, the same home when I was swiping my first bank card and wondering if I'd have to put back the Charmin. We still don't have a dishwasher. My mom has done all these gardens so now my house looks like the garden shack in the middle of Versailles. — Rachael Ray

Never in a million years would I want to live at Versailles with Marie Antoinette or anybody else. I hate to tell you this but I did not even like visiting Versailles. I found it just too ornate. It was like a complete diet of cotton candy, marzipan, and whipped cream. — Kathryn Lasky

The political situation was becoming increasingly volatile. The Treaty of Versailles was such a sore point. It popped up in almost any conversation. Perhaps the separation from the "Reich" (what was left of the old Germany) was more intensely felt in everyday life in our province of East Prussia than in the rest of Germany. The Treaty forced Germany to accept blame for causing the First World War. It demanded that Germany disarm, give up substantial portions of land, and pay heavy reparations to countries of the victors. No other country bore the blame or brunt of the burden as heavily as Germany. Germans viewed the terms imposed by the treaty as blatantly unfair. From our perspective, Germany was drawn into the conflict through a political alliance we had with the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. We did not initiate hostilities. The fact that Europe was a political powder keg was certainly not the exclusive fault of the German Empire. I — Ulrich Karl Thomas

Lace and ruffles, swords and coaches, elegance and leisure, duels and gallant death. All lies. They used perfume instead of soap, their teeth rotted because they never cleaned them, their fingernails smelled of stale gravy. The nobility of France urinated against the walls in the marble corridors of Versailles, and when you finally got several sets of underclothes off the lovely marquise the first thing you noticed was that she needed a bath. — Raymond Chandler

One cannot exclude the possibility of a fascist period in Russia," Staravoitova said on the radio station Echo of Moscow. "We can see too many parallels between Russia's current situation and that of Germany after the Versailles Treaty. A great nation is humiliated, and many of its nationals live outside the country's borders. The disintegration of an empire has taken place at a time when many people still have an imperialist mentality. ... All this is happening at a time of economic crisis. — David Remnick

There was this one time in Vegas when I took four Victoria's Secret models and did one gram off each of their bodies within, like, 45 minutes. I declared myself King of Vegas and decided to remodel my hotel room with my bare hands to resemble King Louis XIV's bedroom at Versailles. Knocked down two entire walls, and later had four knuckle surgeries. Still wasn't as high as Rob Ford. — Charlie Sheen

Why are men talking about what clothes they're wearing? It's so unmanly, I think. It's like Versailles before the Revolution, without the style. — Rupert Everett

When Marshal Foch heard of the signing of the Peace Treaty of Versailles he observed with singular accuracy: This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years. — Winston S. Churchill

Versailles was a gulf into which the labor of France poured its earnings; and it was never full. — Francis Parkman

The pyramids were built for pharaohs on the happy theory that they could take their stuff with them. Versailles was built for kings on the theory that they should live surrounded by the finest stuff. The Mall of America is built on the premise that we should all be able to afford this stuff. It may be a shallow culture, but it's by-God democratic. Sneer if you dare; this is something new in world history. — Molly Ivins

I learned French in Tunis, along with Arabic. I also learned French history. I knew the entire history of the kings of France. And I was fascinated by Versailles. — Azzedine Alaia

When the German people trusting to the promises made by President Wilson in his Fourteen Points, laid down their arms in November 1918, a fateful struggle thereby came to an end for which perhaps individual statesmen, but certainly not the peoples themselves could be held responsible.
The German nation put up such an heroic fight because it was sincere in its conviction that it had been wrongfully attacked and was therefore justified in fighting. the Peace Treaty of Versailles did not seem to be for the purpose of restoring peace to mankind, but rather to perpetuate hatred. — Adolf Hitler

Rarely has a diplomatic document so missed its objective as the Treaty of Versailles. Too punitive for conciliation, too lenient to keep Germany from recovering, the Treaty of Versailles condemned the exhausted democracies to constant vigilance against an irreconcilable and revanchist Germany as well as a revolutionary Soviet Union. — Henry Kissinger

To call the place an anthill would be like calling the Versailles Palace a single-family home. Earthen ramparts rose almost to the tops of the surrounding trees
a hundred feet at least. The circumference could have accommodated a Roman hippodrome. A steady stream of soldiers and drones swarmed in and out of the mound. Some carried fallen trees. One, inexplicably, was dragging a 1967 Chevy Impala. — Rick Riordan

To all the millions of discontented Hitler in a whirlwind campaign offered what seemed to them, in their misery, some measure of hope. He would make Germany strong again, refuse to pay reparations, repudiate the Versailles Treaty, stamp out corruption, bring the money barons to heel (especially if they were Jews) and see to it that every German had a job and bread. — William L. Shirer

Growing up in Versailles is like growing up in a museum, and the people living there are almost the security. — Thomas Mars

Raeder, the political admiral, stealthily built up the German Navy in defiance of the Versailles Treaty, and then put it to use in a series of aggressions which he had taken a leading part in planning. — Erich Raeder

Not badly, considering I was seated between Jesus Christ and Napoleon. — David Lloyd

I'd always been extremely fascinated by the French Nuit Blanche, which is a weekend that they have in Paris where they keep all the museums open until dawn. You can go and hang out in Versailles in the middle of the night and watch the sun come up. — Anna Wintour

Peterhof (Petrodvorets). Nicknamed the "Russian Versailles," the elaborate interiors, formal gardens, and beautiful fountains of Peter the Great's summer palace live up to their moniker. This is St. Petersburg's most famous imperial residence, located in the suburbs about 40 minutes away. — Fodor's Travel Publications Inc.

Formerly, when a king died at Versailles the reign of his successor was immediately announced by the cry: "The king is dead, long live the king", in order to make it understood that despotism is immortal! Now an entire people, moved by a sublime instinct, cried: Long live the Republic! to teach the universe that tyranny died with the tyrant. — Maximilien Robespierre

The African villager with a solar powered smartphone has more access to more information than Louis XIV in the halls of Versailles. — Walter Russell Mead

In continental Europe,' wrote a distraught John Maynard Keynes, shortly after storming out of the British delegation at Versailles, 'the earth heaves and no one but is aware of the rumblings. There it is not just a matter of extravagance or "labour troubles"; but of life and death, of starvation and existence, and of the fearful convulsions of a dying civilization.'24 — Paul Mason

Take the very word "etiquette." From the French for "little signs," it also connotes "social rules" both in French and in English. In fact, the two meanings share a history. King Louis XIV of France needed to give his nobles a bit of help behaving properly at his palace at Versailles, so little signs were posted telling them what was what - social dos and don'ts for dummies, so to speak. — Daniel Post Senning

After the Versailles treaty, the U.S. could have chosen to become a global economic loan shark, but we didn't, and let a lot of the tab slide. So not all lending and borrowing is bad. — Louis Navellier

Parker wasn't the first to play the role of the hedonist's enabler; the divine Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, was the first identifiable fashion icon to champion such unbridled consumption...the queen's personal mission at Versailles was to beautify: to teach her court subjects a more refined and more luxurious lifestyle. — Elyssa Dimant

Dance is very, very old. With Louis XIV at Versailles is where ballet started. — Neve Campbell

Magnus believed that many old things were creations of enduring beauty. The pyramids. Michelangelo's David. Versailles. Magnus himself. — Cassandra Clare

The stables of Versailles in December were not renowned for illumination, but Eliza could hear the gentleman's satins hissing and his linens creaking as he bowed. She made curtseying noises in return. This was answered by a short burst of scratching and rasping as the gentleman adjusted his wig. She cleared her throat. He called for a candle and got a whole silver candelabra, a chevron of flames bobbing and banking like a formation of fireflies through the ambient miasma of horse breath, manure gas and wig powder. — Neal Stephenson

Dreams weigh nothing. - Marie Antoinette — Kathryn Lasky

I hate to tell you this, but I did not even like visiting Versailles. I found it just too ornate. It was like a complete diet of cotton candy, marzipan, and whipped cream. It gave me the mental equivalent of one of those toothaches you get when you bite into something too sweet. — Kathryn Lasky

The idea is not to please the most amount of people. Growing up in Versailles, the idea was to please the least amount of people. — Thomas Mars

couldn't tell a Versailles Merlot from two-buck Chuck, honestly. It all tasted the same to me. — Aubrey Dark

Both Iraq and Syria are a fissile mixture of ethnicities and religions thrown together after Versailles by departing French and British imperialists and only kept together by Baathist tyranny and violence. — Michael Ignatieff

For years I believed they loved me for my voice, my stage presence, my courageous life. 'Incomparable,' they said. 'Divine.' I am the goddesses on the ceilings of the antechambers at Versailles, the statues in the gardens. That's what they see in me. The huntress. The peacemaker. The Amazon. The Muse. Victory. Glory. War. I am divine. But now I wonder if I was anything more than some exotic creature in the King's pleasure gardens - not a lion, and surely not a baboon, but perhaps - yes - a giraffe. Unlikely. Ungainly. Unique. Beautiful in parts but not particularly attractive as a concept. Alien. But compelling, nevertheless. — Kelly Gardiner

Is not a dew-drop on a blade of grass more beautiful than a pearl set in gold? Is not a living spring, which gushes up before us, we know not whence, more beautiful than all the fountains of Versailles? — Friedrich Max Muller

Is America becoming decadent? Do we no longer regard our promises and pledges as sacred? ... We promised to make peace with Germany only in conjunction with the Allies; but we brought forward a separate peace, demanding for ourselves all the advantages of the Treaty of Versailles but rejecting all the responsibilities embodied in the Treaty. It was America's President who induced Europe to form a League of Nations; and then America was the first country that refused to joint it ... If these are not the symptoms of national decadency, what are they? — B.C. Forbes

The vision shared by both [French utopian] Charles Fourier and Robert Owen was for an entire town to fit into one structure. Owen's design for what he called a "parallelogram" was essentially to have a whole city in one building, laid out around a huge quadrangle. Fourier's scheme was to build a massive Versailles-like structure that he called a "phalanstery." In both cases they had these architectural dreams that we now recognize as pretty unappealing. — Christine Jennings

Our White - Whites were a mixed crowd,including a well - known doctor,owner of a chateau near Versailles,an opera singer with an enormous belly and a chaplainbass;a homosexual architect with a beard,two night club porters,and a lawyer who sold Jewish refugees visas for a Central American Republic,which on arrival turned out to be non valid. — Arthur Koestler

She could not imagine why these companies all chose shades of blue for their logos. Blue had always struck her as such a serene, soothing color, yet all social media offered was endless agitation and posturing. It was worse than the court of Versailles. Come — Deborah Harkness

Turgot turned out to be correct regarding this chilling prophecy: "War we ought to shun as the greatest of evils, since it will render impossible for a very long time, and perhaps forever, the reform which is absolutely necessary for the prosperity of the State and for the relief of the people." In other words, every cent the French government spent on guns for the Americans was another centime it would not have to spend on butter for the starving peasants who would one day storm Versailles. The — Sarah Vowell

Each age, each guilty age, builds high walls around its Versailles; and personally I hate those walls most when they are made by literature and art. — John Fowles

He had used only a drop of his perfume for his performance in Grasse. There was enough left to enslave the whole world. If he wanted, he could be feted in Paris, not by tens of thousands, but by hundreds of thousands of people; or could walk out to Versailles and have the King kiss his feet; write the Pope a perfumed letter and reveal himself as the new Messiah; be anointed in Notre-Dame as Supreme Emperor before kings, or even as God come to earth. — Patrick Suskind

In 1939, Hitler expanded the German Navy and, in violation of the Munich Agreement, occupied parts of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. Germany then established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. This protectorate included those portions of Czechoslovakia that had not already been incorporated into Germany. On August 30, 1939, the German Reich issued an ultimatum to Poland concerning the Polish Corridor and the Free City of Danzig. On September 1st, without waiting for a response to its ultimatum, Germany invaded Poland. Much to Hitler's surprise, England honored its treaty with Poland. Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany, thereby ushering in another World War. Officially, "The Second World War" in Europe was started by the German Reich when it attacked Poland, although at the time Germany blamed the Treaty of Versailles. — Hank Bracker

How could they think Noel was hot? If this was REALLY Versailles, Noel SO would not be Louis XIV, he would be the French version of the village idiot — Sara Shepard

And he at once determined on going to find Gilbert, who was residing at Versailles, but who, without having revisited the queen after the journey of the king to Paris, had become the right hand of Necker, who had been reappointed minister, and was endeavoring to organize prosperity by generalizing poverty. — Alexandre Dumas

Hitler was calling upon Almighty God to give him courage and strength to save the German people and right the wrongs of Versailles...and then to settle down and govern the county in the interest of those millions of oppressed "little people" for whom he spoke so eloquently. — Upton Sinclair

Woodrow Wilson, for example, shortly before his death, buffeted by the Senate in his efforts on behalf of the League of Nations and the Versailles Treaty, rejected the suggestion that he seek a seat in the Senate from New Jersey, stating: "Outside of the United States, the Senate does not amount to a damn. And inside the United States the Senate is mostly despised; they haven't had a thought down there in fifty years." There are many who agreed with Wilson in 1920, and some who might agree with those sentiments today. But — John F. Kennedy

One of the many pleasures of 'Versailles' is the way in which it seems to emanate not only from the vexed inner being of Marie Antoinette but from the interstices between what we imagine of her and what she was. — Stacey D'Erasmo

Washington has become our Versailles. We are ruled, entertained, and informed by courtiers
and the media has evolved into a class of courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are mostly courtiers. Our pundits and experts, at least those with prominent public platforms, are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games, and the purpose behind it is deception. — Chris Hedges

Anyone who has walked through the deserted palaces of Versailles or Vienna realise how much of a part of the life of a nation is lost when a monarchy is abolished. If buckingham palace and windsor castle were transformed into museums, if one politician competed against another for president of the republic, Britain would be a sadder and less interesting place. Our politicians are not men such as could challenge more than a thousand years of history. — William Rees-Mogg

The Palace of Whitehall was a city unto itself. It surpassed the Vatican and Versailles in sheer size and pomp and it was no small task to navigate among 1,500 rooms. To find one's destination required prior knowledge or the good graces of a friendly gentleman or lady to take you by the hand and lead you through the labyrinth of offices and private residences. — Glenn Cooper