Palace Of Versailles Quotes

Which is how I come to be running through the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, dressed only as Nature intended.

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.

living in the palace of Versailles must have felt like being imprisoned in a constantly turning kaleidoscope.

Did you know there are three palaces at Versailles? How many does one family need when thousands have no homes? I don’t approve of what those women did, but I understand why they did it. Perhaps one day, I’ll have to do something like it—to feed my son.

America for Me 'Tis fine to see the Old World and travel up and down Among the famous palaces and cities of renown, To admire the crumblyh castles and the statues and kings But now I think I've had enough of antiquated things. So it's home again, and home again, America for me! My heart is turning home again and there I long to be, In the land of youth and freedom, beyond the ocean bars, Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars. Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air; And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair; And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study Rome; But when it comes to living there is no place like home. I like the German fir-woods in green battalions drilled; I like the gardens of Versailles with flashing foutains filled; But, oh, to take your hand, my dear, and ramble for a day In the friendly western woodland where Nature has her sway! I know that Europe's wonderful, yet something seems to lack! The Past is too much with her, and the people looking back. But the glory of the Present is to make the Future free-- We love our land for what she is and what she is to be. Oh, it's home again, and home again, America for me! I want a ship that's westward bound to plough the rolling sea, To the blessed Land of Room Enough, beyond the ocean bars, Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.

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.

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.

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.

Louis XVI made the Franco-American treaties official by receiving the three commissioners at Versailles on March 20. Crowds gathered at the palace gates to catch a glimpse of the famous American, and they shouted “Vive Franklin” as his coach passed through the gold-crested gates.

But figure his thought, when Death is now clutching at his own heart-strings, unlooked for, inexorable! Yes, poor Louis, Death has found thee. No palace walls or life-guards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt buckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out; but he is here, here at thy very life-breath, and will extinguish it. Thou, whose whole existence hitherto was a chimera and scenic show, at length becomest a reality: sumptuous Versailles bursts asunder, like a dream, into void Immensity; Time is done, and all the scaffolding of Time falls wrecked with hideous clangour round thy soul: the pale Kingdoms yawn open; there must thou enter, naked, all unking'd, and await what is appointed thee! Unhappy man, there as thou turnest, in dull agony, on thy bed of weariness, what a thought is thine! Purgatory and Hell-fire, now all-too possible, in the prospect; in the retrospect,--alas, what thing didst thou do that were not better undone; what mortal didst thou generously help; what sorrow hadst thou mercy on? Do the 'five hundred thousand' ghosts, who sank shamefully on so many battle-fields from Rossbach to Quebec, that thy Harlot might take revenge for an epigram,--crowd round thee in this hour? Thy foul Harem; the curses of mothers, the tears and infamy of daughters? Miserable man! thou 'hast done evil as thou couldst:' thy whole existence seems one hideous abortion and mistake of Nature; the use and meaning of thee not yet known. Wert thou a fabulous Griffin, devouring the works of men; daily dragging virgins to thy cave;--clad also in scales that no spear would pierce: no spear but Death's? A Griffin not fabulous but real! Frightful, O Louis, seem these moments for thee.--We will pry no further into the horrors of a sinner's death-bed.

I remember, for instance, the first time I went to the great palace of Versailles outside Paris and how, as I wandered around among all those gardens and fountains and statues, I had a sense that the place was alive with ghosts which I was just barely able to see, that somewhere just beneath the surface of all that was going on around me at that moment, the past was going on around me too with such reality and such poignance that I had to have somebody else to tell about it if only to reassure myself that I wasn’t losing my mind. I wanted and sorely needed to name to another human being the sights that I was seeing and the thoughts and feelings they were giving rise to. I thought that in a way I could not even surely know what I was seeing physically until I could speak of it to someone else, could not come to terms with what I was feeling as either real or unreal until I could put it into words and speak those words and hear other words in response to mine. But there was nobody to speak to, as it happened, and I can still remember the frustration of it: the sense I had of something trying to be born in me that could not be born without the midwifery of expressing it; the sense, it might not be too much to say, of my self trying to be born, of a threshold I had to cross in order to move on into the next room of who I had it in me just then to become. “in the beginning was the Word,” John writes, and perhaps part of what that means is that until there is a word, there can be no beginning. Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember, in an essay called The Speaking and Writing of Words.

America for Me ‘Tis fine to see the Old World, and travel up and down Among the famous palaces and cities of renown, To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of the kings,— But now I think I’ve had enough of antiquated things. So it’s home again, and home again, America for me! My heart is turning home again, and there I long to be, In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars, Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars. Oh, London is a man’s town, there’s power in the air; And Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair; And it’s sweet to dream in Venice, and it’s great to study Rome; But when it comes to living there is no place like home. I like the German fir-woods, in green battalions drilled; I like the gardens of Versailles with flashing fountains filled; But, oh, to take your hand, my dear, and ramble for a day In the friendly western woodland where Nature has her way! I know that Europe’s wonderful, yet something seems to lack: The Past is too much with her, and the people looking back. But the glory of the Present is to make the Future free,— We love our land for what she is and what she is to be. Oh, it’s home again, and home again, America for me! I want a ship that’s westward bound to plough the rolling sea, To the blessed Land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars, Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars. Henry Van

Frenchmen; Joseph Michel and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier demonstrated to the world, the first hot air balloon, in their home town of Annonay. It successfully rose to an altitude of 2,000 meters and covered a distance of 2 Km, during it’s first flight. Only a few months later, the two men proved the value of their invention to the King Ludwig XVI of France and his wife Queen Marie Antoinette, on the grounds of their Palace in Versailles. During this flight of September 19, 1783, the two men also took along three passengers,

I never hated you, Matt,” Maude objected gently. “When we said goodbye in New York, part of my heart remained locked with yours. And when you came to visit your aunt, I knew you were the missing piece. And the night we spent at the Palace

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.

was a lavish event at the Palace of Versailles to celebrate the Alliance’s fifteenth anniversary. He wanted as many as two hundred people there. The budget was €300,000.

Some beautiful things do last, I say. They do not. They do. Look there. Behind you. At the table where your family sits. I see three beautiful things. One, the queen your mother. Two, the dainty goblet she sips from, and three, Versailles rising behind her. All of these are here now and will be here tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. He smiles and hugs me, happy again. Now his mother is dead. Her pretty goblet smashed. The palace shuttered and empty. I have stolen. I have deceived. I have damaged things and people. And yet nothing grieves me more than to think he now remembers that night. And calls me liar.

Sharko and his interpreter had to hand over their cell phones—to keep them from taking pictures or recording conversations—and were ushered into an office worthy of a gallery in the Palace of Versailles. Everything was outsized. Marble floors, Canopic and Minoan vases, figural tapestries, gilded bronzes. An immense fan spun on the ceiling, stirring the viscous air. Sharko smiled to himself. National heritage: everything here belonged to the state, and not to the conceited pig who sat heavily in his chair while sucking on a local cigar. While many Cairenes carried their excess weight gracefully, this fellow wasn’t one of them.

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.

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.

spent one week alone in the Hotel Maillot, after the parents' departure to New York in the room where my parents had spent four months. I went to see the Louvre - a unique experience - and Versailles. The palace was completely empty since the French had hidden all the treasures during the war. The palace itself and the gardens were grandiose, but no flowers in bloom, no fountains in action. I went to see the tomb of Napoleon, in the Dome des Invalides. It was that day of the week when the building was closed. I went to see the places that my high school French teacher, Miss Grunspan, had described.

Her tale "Perfect Love" apparently involved an ingenious underwater riff on Versailles--- exquisite shell grottos mimicking the king's own Grotte de Thétys with its cunning hydraulics; a palace guarded by a hundred dolphins; ballets of naiades in gowns made of glittering fish-scale dresses...

Finally, each night, the crowd gather at the king's antechamber to attend the dinner of the Royal Table. Another grand ritual: four soups--- his favorite being crayfish in a silver bowl--- sole in a small dish, fried eggs, a whole pheasant with redcurrant jelly, a whole partridge or duck (depending on the season) stuffed with truffles, salads, mutton, ham, pastry, fruit, compote, preserves, cakes. All stone-cold, for the kitchen is so far away that the king has never experienced a hot meal, and eaten largely with hands, for nor has he ever touched that new-fangled device the fork. For special occasions entire tiered gardens of desserts form pyramids on the table: precariously balanced exotic fruits, jellies, and sweet pastes; sorbets scented with amber and musk; the wonders of the ancient world recreated in spun-sugar and pâte morte; gingerbread palaces.

In America’s Gilded Age palaces the opulence of France’s ancien régime was the style most often simulated. As a result, the first-class lounge on A deck, the showiest of the Titanic’s public rooms, had been designed to emulate Versailles—though with some English coziness added in the patterned carpeting and comfortably upholstered sofas with large green pillows. The walls were paneled in oak with carved rococo detailing, although the use of gilding was restrained, reserved for some details on the plastered ceiling, a gilt ormolu wall clock, and the statuette of the Artemis of Versailles on the marble mantelpiece. At the far end of the room stood a mahogany, glass-fronted bookcase that held the ship’s library, and from its shelves

This isn’t my movement. What do I care if they’re made to look bad? Maybe it’s ‘cause this reminds me of the early days of the French Revolution, when a march led by lower-class women stormed the palace of Versailles so they could go yell at the royal family. Even though their revolution ended tragically a few years later, there’s something endearing about the downtrodden standing up to their spoiled rulers.

To put the ensuing craze for mirrors in perspective: in the early sixteenth century an elaborate Venetian mirror was more valuable than a painting by one of the giants of the Renaissance, Raphael, and at the end of the seventeenth century, in France, the Countess of Fiesque swapped a piece of land for a mirror. In 1684 the Hall of Mirrors was completed at the Palace of Versailles: it was comprised of more than 300 panes of mirrored glass, so that royalty could see their glory reflected seemingly to infinity.

Mystery men with strange persuasive powers, sometimes good but more often evil, are described and discussed in many books with no UFO or religious orientation. A dark gentleman in a cloak and hood is supposed to have handed Thomas Jefferson the design for the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States (you will find this on a dollar bill). Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and many others are supposed to have had enigmatic meetings with these odd personages. These stories turn up in such unexpected places as Madame Du Barry’s memoirs. She claimed repeated encounters with a strange young man who would approach her suddenly on the street and give her startling prophecies about herself. He pointedly told her that the last time she would see him would serve as an omen for a sudden reversal of her fortunes. Sure enough, on April 27, 1774, as she and her ailing lover, King Louis XV, were heading for the palace of Versailles, the youthful mystery man appeared one final time. “I mechanically directed my eyes toward the iron gate leading to the garden,” she wrote. “I felt my face drained of blood as a cry of horror escaped my lips. For, leaning against the gate was that singular being.” The coach was halted, and three men searched the area thoroughly but could find no trace of him. He had vanished into thin air. Soon afterward Madame Du Barry’s illustrious career in the royal courts ended, and she went into exile. Malcolm X, the late leader of a black militant group, reported a classic experience with a paraphysical “man in black” in his autobiography. He was serving a prison sentence at the time, and the entity materialized in his prison cell: "As I lay on my bed, I suddenly became aware of a man sitting beside me in my chair. He had on a dark suit, I remember. I could see him as plainly as I see anyone I look at. He wasn’t black, and he wasn’t white. He was light-brown-skinned, an Asiatic cast of countenance, and he had oily black hair. I looked right into his face. I didn’t get frightened. I knew I wasn’t dreaming. I couldn’t move, I didn’t speak, and he didn’t. I couldn’t place him racially—other than I knew he was a non-European. I had no idea whatsoever who he was. He just sat there. Then, as suddenly as he had come, he was gone.

They, they, they. The mysterious "they" of Versailles, as though it is the palace itself that talks, as though the statues and mirrors can speak.

On the 5th of October, in pouring rain, some 6,000 working women, fishwives, cleaners, marketstall holders, and prostitutes, marched on Versailles. Their ostensible reason was a rumor that at a welcome banquet given for the Flanders Regiment, newly arrived at the palace, the tricolor cockade had been trampled underfoot (...) armed with scythes, pikes, and any other weapons they could lay their hands on, they marched straight to the National Assembly, shouting their slogans and screaming for bread (...) In the early hours of the next day, the king and queen were awakened by furious shouts of, "mort à la femme Autrichienne", death to the Austrian woman.

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).

He told me that in the hallways at Versailles, there hung a faint, ever-so-faint smell of human excrement, “because as the chambermaids hurried along a tiny bit would always splash from the pots.” Many years later I realized that he was half-remembering a detail from the court of Louis XV, namely that the latrines were so few and so poorly placed at the palace, the marquesses used to steal away and relieve themselves on stairwells and behind the beautiful furniture...

As the triumphant French crusaders began to march from victory to victory, in France, echoing the march of the columns in Algeria, the ‘greatness’ of the Crusades was revived in arts, expressing past French glories. Highly popular amongst artists were Louis IX’s two crusades (1248-50; 1270), which symbolised successes of French history. Exhibitions of sculptures and paintings and tapestries of scenes from his life abounded. Thus was organised in the Salles des Croisades at Versailles a festival as part of King Louis Phillipe's (King 1830-1848) programme to turn the palace into a museum ‘dedicated to the glories of France.’ The five crusade rooms displayed each a key crusade events and individuals and the coats of arms of their participants. In total, there were 120 paintings of individual crusaders and scenes of battles and sieges in which French crusaders played a leading role.761 Louis Philippe employed no less than fifty painters for such an enterprise.762 Correspondingly, in the Musée, three rooms were dedicated to the war in the colony, which were called the Salles d’Afrique. The Salles d’Afrique were built exactly above the Salles des Croisades, which symbolically linked the conquest of Algeria to the Crusades.763

When I regained consciousness I was seeing visions. They were architectural. I saw majestic palaces and other grand edifices that were all built out of alphabets. The building blocks of these fantastic structures were letters, as if the world was words, created from the same basic material as language, and poetry. There was no essential difference between things made out of letters and stories, which were made of the same stuff. Their essences were the same. The visions conjured up external walls, great halls, high domes that were both lavish and austere, a Mughal mirror-tiled Sheesh Mahal at one time, and at another a stone-walled place with small barred windows. Something like Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was manifested to me by my unsettled brain, and the Alhambra, and Versailles; like Fatehpur Sikri and the Agra Red Fort and the Lake Palace of Udaipur; but also a darker version of El Escorial in Spain, menacing, puritanical, a nightmare rather than a dream. When I looked closely the alphabets were always present, mirror-glittering alphabets and grim letters of stone, brick alphabets and treasure-letters of diamond and gold. After a while, I understood that my eyes were closed[…]

Since my Arrival this time I have driven about Paris, more than I did before. The rural Scenes around this Town are charming. The public Walks, Gardens, &c. are extreamly beautifull. The Gardens of the Palais Royal, the Gardens of the Tuilleries, are very fine. The Place de Louis 15, the Place Vendome or Place de Louis 14, the Place victoire, the Place royal, are fine Squares, ornamented with very magnificent statues. I wish I had time to describe these objects to you in a manner, that I should have done, 25 Years ago, but my Head is too full of Schemes and my Heart of Anxiety to use Expressions borrowed from you know whom. To take a Walk in the Gardens of the Palace of the Tuilleries, and describe the Statues there, all in marble, in which the ancient Divinities and Heroes are represented with exquisite Art, would be a very pleasant Amusement, and instructive Entertainment, improving in History, Mythology, Poetry, as well as in Statuary. Another Walk in the Gardens of Versailles, would be usefull and agreable. But to observe these Objects with Taste and describe them so as to be understood, would require more time and thought than I can possibly Spare. It is not indeed the fine Arts, which our Country requires. The Usefull, the mechanic Arts, are those which We have occasion for in a young Country, as yet simple and not far advanced in Luxury, altho perhaps much too far for her Age and Character. I could fill Volumes with Descriptions of Temples and Palaces, Paintings, Sculptures, Tapestry, Porcelaine, &c. &c. &c. -- if I could have time. But I could not do this without neglecting my duty. The Science of Government it is my Duty to study, more than all other Studies Sciences: the Art of Legislation and Administration and Negotiation, ought to take Place, indeed to exclude in a manner all other Arts. I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Painting and Poetry Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.

Since my Arrival this time I have driven about Paris, more than I did before. The rural Scenes around this Town are charming. The public Walks, Gardens, &c. are extreamly beautifull. The Gardens of the Palais Royal, the Gardens of the Tuilleries, are very fine. The Place de Louis 15, the Place Vendome or Place de Louis 14, the Place victoire, the Place royal, are fine Squares, ornamented with very magnificent statues. I wish I had time to describe these objects to you in a manner, that I should have done, 25 Years ago, but my Head is too full of Schemes and my Heart of Anxiety to use Expressions borrowed from you know whom. To take a Walk in the Gardens of the Palace of the Tuilleries, and describe the Statues there, all in marble, in which the ancient Divinities and Heroes are represented with exquisite Art, would be a very pleasant Amusement, and instructive Entertainment, improving in History, Mythology, Poetry, as well as in Statuary. Another Walk in the Gardens of Versailles, would be usefull and agreable. But to observe these Objects with Taste and describe them so as to be understood, would require more time and thought than I can possibly Spare. It is not indeed the fine Arts, which our Country requires. The Usefull, the mechanic Arts, are those which We have occasion for in a young Country, as yet simple and not far advanced in Luxury, altho perhaps much too far for her Age and Character. I could fill Volumes with Descriptions of Temples and Palaces, Paintings, Sculptures, Tapestry, Porcelaine, &c. &c. &c. -- if I could have time. But I could not do this without neglecting my duty. The Science of Government it is my Duty to study, more than all other Studies Sciences: the Art of Legislation and Administration and Negotiation, ought to take Place, indeed to exclude in a manner all other Arts. I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Painting and Poetry Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.