Quotes About Power

I want a job, Lady Carey. It isn't enough to be a councillor, I need an official place in the household." "I'll tell her." "I want a post in the Jewel House. Or the Exchequer." She nods. "She made Tom Wyatt a poet. She made Harry Percy a madman. I'm sure she has some ideas about what to make you.

Henry had sat up: 'I can do as it pleases me,' his monarch said. 'God would not allow my pleasure to be contrary to his design, nor my designs to be impeded by his will.' A shadow of cunning had crossed his face. 'And Gardiner himself said so.' Henry

She is selling herself by the inch. The gentlemen all say you are advising her. She wants a present in cash for every advance above her knee.' 'Not like you, Mary. One push backwards and, good girl, here's your fourpence.' 'Well. You know. If king are doing the pushing." She laughs. "Anne has very long legs. By the time he comes to her secret part he will be bankrupt. The French wars will be cheap, in comparison.

was proud of what he did. He thought if you let the people read God's word for themselves, Christendom would fall apart. There would be no more government, no more justice.' 'He believed this? Truly?' 'That we needed the constraint of ignorance? Yes.' 'He did not give much credit to his fellow man.

I tell you, Cromwell, you've got face, coming here." "My lord — you sent for me." "Did I?" Norfolk looks alarmed. "It's come to that?

Now listen to me, Crumb. If I say I need to see the Tudor, no blacksmith's boy will say me nay." "He may weld you, my lord," Richard Riche says.

But you ought to know,' the king insists. 'Her nature. How ill she has behaved to me, when I gave her everything. All men should know and be warned about what women are. Their appetites are unbounded. I believe she has committed adultery with a hundred men.

Listen, son, this is what I know: right is what you can get away with, and wrong is what they whip you for. As I'm sure life will instruct you, by and by

They tell us that the rules of power and the rules of war are the same, the art is to deceive; and you will deceive, and be deceived in your turn, whether you are an ambassador or a suitor.

Se o leão conhecesse a sua própria força, seria difícil dominá-lo.

His displeasure! I am sure I have displeased him, he thinks. Look how he steamed and glared, that day I took a holiday. Look how he pawed the ground and rolled his eyes. This is what Henry does. He uses people up. He takes all they give him and more. When he is finished with them he is noisier and fatter and they are husks or corpses.

So many words,' Gregory says. 'So many words and oaths and deeds, that when folk read of them in time to come they will hardly believe such a man as Lord Cromwell walked the earth. You do everything. You have everything. You are everything. So I beg you, grant me an inch of your broad earth, Father, and leave my wife to me.

Henry says, 'Her Grace will withdraw.' Jane is shaking. 'They are too much burdened with taxes.' The king leans forward. 'The burdens of tax do not rest on the shoulders of labourers, or small husbandmen. Dives, the rich man, knows and has always known how to pass off his interests as the interests of Lazarus, the beggar.

The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes:

England has enjoyed fifty years of peace. This is the Tudors' covenant; peace is what they offer.

History's what people are trying to hide from you, not what they're trying to show you. You search for it in the same way you sift through a landfill: for evidence of what people want to bury.

We councillors think we are men of vision and learning, we gravely delineate our position, set forth our plans and argue our case far into the night. Then some little girl sweeps through and upsets the candle and sets fire to our sleeve; leaves us slapping ourselves like madmen, trying to save our skin.

The role needs honest force and honeyed words, and a certain willingness to obfuscate about the intentions of the King of England: and as Wyatt says that to him nothing is ever clear, and no truth is a single truth, he seems the man for the job.

Listen, Cromwell. You don't get a good name among the lowly by sharing their concerns and handing out coin. You get their respect by overlooking them, as if you did not understand their sort, and your own belly had never been empty.' 'I could not so belie myself.

the English will forgive a king anything, until he tries to tax them.

The king's companions are prepared to march. So scented, the courtiers, so urbane: the rustle of silk, the soundless tread of padded shoes. But slaughter is their trade. Like butchers in the shambles, it is what they were reared for. Peace, to them, is just the interval between wars.

As a wife she must obey him: women must obey, even queens.

If Henry lives twenty years, Henry who is Wolsey's creation, and then leaves this child to succeed him, I can build my own prince: to the glorification of God and the commonwealth of England. Because I will not be too old. Look at Norfolk, already he is sixty, his father was seventy when he fought at Flodden. And I shall not be like Henry Wyatt and say, now I am retiring from affairs. Because what is there, but affairs?

No: these are the complaints of small landowners, and men who don't like to pay their taxes. Men who want to be petty kings in their shires, who want the women to curtsey as they pass through the marketplace. I know these paltry gods, he thinks. We had them in Putney. They have them everywhere.