Louis Xiv Versailles Quotes

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

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.

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

What a web deceit made, its strands strangling the innocent and the guilty alike.

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.

Did you know that all ladies at Louis XIV’s court at Versailles were required to have a thirteen-inch waist or less? And that their dresses weighed between thirty and forty pounds?

a middle-aged lady in a small country town, by doing no more than yield whole-hearted obedience to her own irresistible eccentricities, and to a spirit of mischief engendered by the utter idleness of her existence, could see, without ever having given a thought to Louis XIV, the most trivial occupations of her daily life, her morning toilet, her luncheon, her afternoon nap, assume, by virtue of their despotic singularity, something of the interest that was to be found in what Saint-Simon used to call the ‘machinery’ of life at Versailles;

Shortly before Louis XIV died in 1715, a new ordinance decreed that feces left in the corridors of Versailles would be removed once a week.

Locke had traveled to France and Versailles. He had seen Louis XIV’s petite levée and watched the elaborate rituals of absolute kingship, of total rule by one man. Locke’s one goal in life was to make sure the same thing never happened in England. But whereas others tried to fight for freedom with guns or plots or revolutions, Locke would fight for it with ideas. His weapon at hand was the manuscript under his arm. “Absolute monarchy,” it read in part, “is inconsistent with Civil Society, and so can be no form of Civil Government at all.” His book revealed why governments must serve the interests of everyone, rather than one person; and why one-man rule was the perversion, not the perfection, of nature—particularly the nature so brilliantly illuminated by his friend Isaac Newton.

Louis the 14th, as we know, liked to think of himself as the sun. The dazzling light that irradiated all around him. Like that it may have been, but there was very little warmth. Let no one imagine that life at Versailles was fun. It was, for the most part, bitterly cold, desperately uncomfortable, poisonously unhealthy, and of a tedium probably unparalleled. The most prevalent emotion was fear. Fear of the king himself, fear of his absolute power, fear of the single faultless word or gesture that might destroy one's career, or even one's life. And what was one's life anyway? The ceaseless round of empty ceremonial leading absolutely nowhere, offering the occasional mild amusement, but no real pleasure. As for happiness, it wasn't even to be thought of. Of course, there were lavish entertainments, balls, masques, operas, how else was morale to be maintained? But absentees were noted at once and the reasons for their absence the subject of endless inquiries. Social death, or worse, could easily result.

This period of decline is exemplified by decadent leaders such as the notorious Emperor Nero (who used a citywide fire in Rome to confiscate land to build an expansive palace), Louis XIV (who expanded the Palace of Versailles while productivity fell and people endured hardships at the height of his power), and the Ming Dynasty’s Wanli Emperor (who withdrew from actively governing and focused on the construction of his own immense tomb).

Nec pluribus impar (Não inferior aos outros)

Quo non ascendam? (onde não chegarei eu?) - Louis XIV, King of France

Nec pluribus impar (não inferior a outros) - Louis XIV, King of France

As the Italian diplomat Giovanni Battista Primi Visconti concluded after a lengthy sojourn at the court of Versailles: “He [Louis XIV] knew how to play the king perfectly on all occasions.” During the final decades of his reign, he became a sort of one-man stylistic police, obsessively checking to make sure everything around him constantly lived up to his aesthetic standards. When all was just right, he took great pleasure in the conspicuous display of gorgeousness. For example, on December 7, 1697, the King—he was then fifty-nine—hosted some of the grandest festivities of the age to celebrate the marriage of his eldest grandson, the Duc de Bourgogne. For one evening reception, Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors was lit with four thousand candles, transforming it into a vast arcade of flickering light.

Because humans are social creatures by nature, power depends on social interaction and circulation. To make yourself powerful you must place yourself at the center of things, as Louis XIV did at Versailles.

those who come after us will think that they are just fairy tales

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

She is like a dark plum, he thought. She might be sweet when you bit into her, but it was just as likely she'd be bitter. He liked not knowing which side he'd taste.

Leonardo began painting Mona Lisa in 1503 or 1504 in Florence, working occasionally on the piece for four years, before moving to France. He worked intermittently on the painting for another three years, finishing it shortly before he died in 1519. Most likely through the heirs of Leonardo’s assistant Salai, the king bought the painting for 4,000 écus and kept it at Château Fontainebleau, where it remained until given to Louis XIV, who moved it to the Palace of Versailles. After the French Revolution, it was relocated to the Louvre. Napoleon I had the portrait moved to his personal bedroom in the Tuileries Palace, but it was later returned to the Louvre.