Quotes from The Constant Princess

Philippa Gregory ·  390 pages

Rating: (135.1K votes)


“Words have weight, something once said cannot be unsaid. Meaning is like a stone dropped into a pool; the ripples will spread and you cannot know what back they wash against.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess


“Just because one man calls him Allah and another calls him God is no reason for believers to be enemies.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess


“He may well speak French and Latin and half a dozen languages, but since he has nothing to say – what good are they?”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess


“You have to have faith that you are doing God's will. Sometimes you will not understand. Sometimes you will doubt. But if you are doing God's will, you can't be wrong, you can't go wrong.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess


“War does not answer war, war does not finish war. The only ending is peace.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess



“They say that at the mountain pass he looked back at his kingdom, his beautiful kingdom, and wept, and his mother told him to weep like a woman for what he could not hold as a man.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess


“True obedience can only happen when you secretly think you know better, and you choose to bow your head. Anything short of that is just agreement, and any ninny-in-waiting can agree.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess


“In Spain," indeed! He would have got no closer than the Indies if I had not showed him how to do it. Stupid puppy.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess


“We are both people of faith," he said quietly. "Our enemies should be the people who have no faith, neither in their God, nor in others, nor in themselves. The people who should face our crusade should be those who bring cruelty into the world for no reason but their own power. There is enough sin and wickedness to fight, without taking up arms against people who believe in a forgiving God and who try to lead a good life.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess


“I realize that I can laugh, that it is possible to be happy, that laughter and hope can come back to me.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess



“God does not make the way smooth for those He loves. He sends hardships to try them. Those that God loves the best are those who suffer the worst.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess


“Knowing that you do not know is to ask humbly, instead of tell arrogantly. That is the beginning of wisdom.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess


“when i first saw him i thought he was as beautiful as a knight from the romances, like a troubadour, like a poet. I thought i could be like a lady in a tower and he could sing beneath my window and
persuade me to love him. But although he has the looks of a
poet he doesn't have the wit. I can never get more than two
words out of him, and i begin to feel that i demean myself in trying to please him.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess


“Then life taught me a harder lesson, beloved: it is better to forgive an enemy than destroy him.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess


“I am a child of the true religion and you are an infidel,’ she said, but with less conviction than she had ever felt before. ‘We are both people of faith,’ he said quietly. ‘Our enemies should be the people who have no faith, neither in their God, nor in others, nor in themselves. The people who should face our crusade should be those who bring cruelty into the world for no reason but their own power. There is enough sin and wickedness to fight, without taking up arms against people who believe in a forgiving God and who try to lead a good life.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess



“He could not have got through the Sierra Nevada if she had not been sending him men and digging teams to level the road for him. No one else could have driven a road through there. He would have trusted no one else to support him, to hold the kingdom together as he pushed forwards. She could have conquered the mountains for no one else; he was the only one that could have attracted her support. What looked like a remarkable unity of two calculating players was deceptive—it was their passion which they played out on the political stage. She was a great queen because that was how she could evoke his desire. He was a great general in order to match her. It was their love, their lust, which drove them; almost as much as God.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess


“I was born to be Queen of England and mother of the next King of England. I have to fulfill my destiny, it is my God-given destiny.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess


“She would not let it go. “I had thought to be Queen of England and see my son on the throne,” she repeated.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess


“And swore that whatever the obstacles before me, I should be Queen of England.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess


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About the author

Philippa Gregory
Born place: in Kenya
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Popular quotes

“Is who you are determined by what you do, or is what you do determined by who you are?”
― Neil T. Anderson, quote from Victory Over the Darkness


“Children killing children. That's a terrible thing."
"What do you think has gone wrong?"
"It's not just the children. It's the grown-ups too. Some people are growing children, not raising children, and there's a big difference."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, people grow hogs. You give them a place to live, give them all the food they need to keep growing, and make sure that they don't get sick on you. With children you got to raise them. Of course, you feed and clothe them. But a parent has to take the time to teach them right and wrong. A parent has to discipline them. And a parent got to be there to listen to them, help them with their problems. I think most people do their best, but there are some parents these days that are growing children, not raising children.
"It's a sad thing. These children have everything they need to grow up, but they are missing something inside. They must hurt awful bad and no one has shown them the way to live. Buying them their food or even fancy clothes or a car ain't going to help if a child is hurting inside. We all need the same things.”
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“A person who has had the misfortune to fall victim to the spell of a philosophical system (and the spells of sorcerers are mere trifles in comparison to the disastrous effect of the spell of a philosophical system!) can no longer see the world, or people, or historic events, as they are; he sees everything only through the distorting prism of the system by which he is possessed. Thus, a Marxist of today is incapable of seeing anything else in the history of mankind other than the “class struggle”.

What I am saying concerning mysticism, gnosis, magic and philosophy would be considered by him only as a ruse on the part of the bourgeois class, with the aim of “screening with a mystical and idealistic haze” the reality of the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie…although I have not inherited anything from my parents and I have not experienced a single day without having to earn my living by means of work recognised as “legitimate” by Marxists!

Another contemporary example of possession by a system is Freudianism. A man possessed by this system will see in everything that I have written only the expression of “suppressed libido”, which seeks and finds release in this manner. It would therefore be the lack of sexual fulfillment which has driven me to occupy myself with the Tarot and to write about it!
Is there any need for further examples? Is it still necessary to cite the Hegelians with their distortion of the history of humanity, the Scholastic “realists” of the Middle Ages with the Inquisition, the rationalists of the eighteenth century who were blinded by the light of their own autonomous reasoning?

Yes, autonomous philosophical systems separated from the living body of tradition are parasitic structures, which seize the thought, feeling and finally the will of human beings. In fact, they play a role comparable to the psycho-pathological complexes of neurosis or other psychic maladies of obsession. Their physical analogy is cancer.”
― quote from Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism


“Use Redline wireless, he had argued. Use Bluetooth Extreme. Use something that wasn’t hardwired. It was more dependable, less subject to malfunctions than the more rudimentary system they were using might invite. So”
― Terry Brooks, quote from The Gypsy Morph


“We are to succeed through the exercise of intellect, not brute force.”
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