Madame Tussaud

...we are all sorry when loss comes for us. The test of our character comes not in how many tears we shed but in how we act after those tears have dried.

Sometimes, it is not the kings and queen who make for the most fascinating history but the shadowy souls who happen to be in the right place at the right time.

What I think and what Iam prepared to say are entirely different things.

But that's how the heart is. Stubborn and foolish.

Things change, and not always for the better.

Why does life carry some people on the crest of the wave while others drown beneath the water?

I always thought the purpose of time was to move forward, not backward.

History will remember this," she says. "I do not need to.

I understand that you are still grieving. But we will always be grieving.

A country is only as strong as its military, and only as moral as the men who serve in its ranks.

You will never have to marry for money. You will never have to depend on anyne but yourself.

I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children. My blood alone remains: take it, but do not make me suffer long. —MARIE ANTOINETTE

Let it be a reminder that nothing in this world can last." "Even pain," I reply.

The only thing money is good for, Marie, is buying time. The time to do the things you like.

Everything looks new, but then that is the nature of science.

But there is nothing interesting about being unprepared.

Fortune does not change men, it unmasks them. —SUZANNE NECKER, WIFE OF JACQUES NECKER, MINISTER OF FINANCE

The Americans are right: there should not be taxation unless the people consent to it. And it should be fair, which means the nobility and clergy should be taxed as well.

When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is . . . the most indispensable of duties. -Marquis de Lafayette

death is quick. What is important is the happiness that came before it.

I would not exchange my leisure hours for all the wealth in the world. -Comte De Mirabeau

Repeat the names,” my mother instructs, and we listen while Paschal recites the names of the months. “Vintage, Fog, Frost, Snow, Rain …” He hesitates on the sixth month. “Wind,” she says helpfully. We are all sitting at the caissier’s desk, and it is very important he get this right. “Wind,” he repeats after her. “Seed, Blossoms, M-Mead—” “Meadows,” I say. “Meadows, Harvesting, Heat, and Fruit.” Isabel claps. “Very good.” “And what year is this?” my mother asks. Paschal frowns. “Seventeen ninety-three?” “No,” Isabel says forcefully. “It is Year Two.” “But I don’t understand.” “The first year began on September twenty-second, seventeen ninety-two.” The day France declared itself the First Republic. “But how?” He doesn’t see how he could have been alive before time began. “That is the decree of the Convention,” she explains.

Vitruvius discovered that the length of a man’s ear is one-third of the length of his face, and the length of a man’s foot is one-sixth of his height. As a child, I was asked to measure the distance from the tip of my head to the floor and divide it by the distance from my belly button to the ground. The number I came up with is the same number that nearly everyone will. A ratio of 1.618.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. —THOMAS JEFFERSON

But it is not an option for women like myself and Rose Bertin. Men want wives who are sweet and good with children, not women who plan and watch the accounts

In the arts the way in which an idea is rendered, and the manner in which it is expressed, is much more important than the idea itself. —JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID

Man was born free and everywhere he is in shackles. –JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

Look at Rose Bertin. From an ordinary seamstress to the milliner