Produced by David Widger




QUOTES AND IMAGES FROM JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY



HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS


By John Lothrop Motley




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Motley's History of the Netherlands

Title Page

The Siege of Antwerp

Prince William of Orange-Nassau (William the Silent)

The Earl of Leichester

Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma

John of Barneveld

Bookcover

The Hague





1566, the last year of peace

A pleasantry called voluntary
contributions or benevolences

A good lawyer is a bad Christian

A terrible animal, indeed, is an
unbridled woman

A common hatred united them, for a time
at least

A penal offence in the republic to talk
of peace or of truce

A most fatal success

A country disinherited by nature of its
rights

A free commonwealth--was thought an
absurdity

A hard bargain when both parties are
losers

A burnt cat fears the fire

A despot really keeps no accounts, nor
need to do so

A sovereign remedy for the disease of
liberty

A pusillanimous peace, always possible
at any period

A man incapable of fatigue, of
perplexity, or of fear

A truce he honestly considered a
pitfall of destruction

A great historian is almost a statesman

Able men should be by design and of
purpose suppressed

About equal to that of England at the
same period

Absolution for incest was afforded at
thirty-six livres

Abstinence from unproductive
consumption

Abstinence from inquisition into
consciences and private parlour

Absurd affectation of candor

Accepting a new tyrant in place of the
one so long ago deposed

Accustomed to the faded gallantries

Achieved the greatness to which they
had not been born

Act of Uniformity required Papists to
assist

Acts of violence which under pretext of
religion

Admired or despised, as if he or she
were our contemporary

Adulation for inferiors whom they
despise

Advanced orthodox party-Puritans

Advancing age diminished his tendency
to other carnal pleasures

Advised his Majesty to bestow an annual
bribe upon Lord Burleigh

Affecting to discredit them

Affection of his friends and the wrath
of his enemies

Age when toleration was a vice

Agreements were valid only until he
should repent

Alas! the benighted victims of
superstition hugged their chains

Alas! we must always have something to
persecute

Alas! one never knows when one becomes
a bore

Alexander's exuberant discretion

All Italy was in his hands

All fellow-worms together

All business has been transacted with
open doors

All reading of the scriptures
(forbidden)

All the majesty which decoration could
impart

All denounced the image-breaking

All claimed the privilege of
persecuting

All his disciples and converts are to
be punished with death

All Protestants were beheaded, burned,
or buried alive

All classes are conservative by
necessity

All the ministers and great
functionaries received presents

All offices were sold to the highest
bidder

Allow her to seek a profit from his
misfortune

Allowed the demon of religious hatred
to enter into its body

Almost infinite power of the meanest of
passions

Already looking forward to the revolt
of the slave States

Altercation between Luther and Erasmus,
upon predestination

Always less apt to complain of
irrevocable events

American Unholy Inquisition

Amuse them with this peace negotiation

An inspiring and delightful recreation
(auto-da-fe)

An hereditary papacy, a perpetual
pope-emperor

An age when to think was a crime

An unjust God, himself the origin of
sin

An order of things in which mediocrity
is at a premium

Anarchy which was deemed inseparable
from a non-regal form

Anatomical study of what has ceased to
exist

And give advice.  Of that, although
always a spendthrift

And now the knife of another priest-led
fanatic

And thus this gentle and heroic spirit
took its flight

Angle with their dissimulation as with
a hook

Announced his approaching marriage with
the Virgin Mary

Annual harvest of iniquity by which his
revenue was increased

Anxiety to do nothing wrong, the
senators did nothing at all

Are apt to discharge such obligations--
(by) ingratitude

Are wont to hang their piety on the
bell-rope

Argument in a circle

Argument is exhausted and either action
or compromise begins

Aristocracy of God's elect

Arminianism

Arrested on suspicion, tortured till
confession

Arrive at their end by fraud, when
violence will not avail them

Artillery

As logical as men in their cups are
prone to be

As the old woman had told the Emperor
Adrian

As if they were free will not make them
free

As lieve see the Spanish as the
Calvinistic inquisition

As ready as papists, with age, fagot,
and excommunication

As with his own people, keeping no
back-door open

As neat a deception by telling the
truth

At a blow decapitated France

At length the twig was becoming the
tree

Atheist, a tyrant, because he resisted
dictation from the clergy

Attachment to a half-drowned land and
to a despised religion

Attacked by the poetic mania

Attacking the authority of the pope

Attempting to swim in two waters

Auction sales of judicial ermine

Baiting his hook a little to his
appetite

Barbara Blomberg, washerwoman of
Ratisbon

Batavian legion was the imperial body
guard

Beacons in the upward path of mankind

Beating the Netherlanders into
Christianity

Beautiful damsel, who certainly did not
lack suitors

Because he had been successful (hated)

Becoming more learned, and therefore
more ignorant

Been already crimination and
recrimination more than enough

Before morning they had sacked thirty
churches

Began to scatter golden arguments with
a lavish hand

Beggars of the sea, as these
privateersmen designated themselves

Behead, torture, burn alive, and bury
alive all heretics

Being the true religion, proved by so
many testimonies

Believed in the blessed advent  of
peace

Beneficent and charitable purposes
(War)

best defence in this case is little
better than an impeachment

Bestowing upon others what was not his
property

Better to be governed by magistrates
than mobs

Better is the restlessness of a noble
ambition

Beware of a truce even more than of a
peace

Bigotry which was the prevailing
characteristic of the age

Bishop is a consecrated pirate

Blessed freedom from speech-making

Blessing of God  upon the Devil's work

Bold reformer had only a new dogma in
place of the old ones

Bomb-shells were not often used
although known for a century

Breath, time, and paper were profusely
wasted and nothing gained

Brethren, parents, and children, having
wives in common

Bribed the Deity

Bungling diplomatists and credulous
dotards

Burned, strangled, beheaded, or buried
alive (100,000)

Burned alive if they objected to
transubstantiation

Burning with bitter revenge for all the
favours he had received

Burning of Servetus at Geneva

Business of an officer to fight, of a
general to conquer

But the habit of dissimulation was
inveterate

But after all this isn't a war  It is a
revolution

But not thoughtlessly indulgent to the
boy

Butchery in the name of Christ was
suspended

By turns, we all govern and are
governed

Calling a peace perpetual can never
make it so

Calumny is often a stronger and more
lasting power than disdain

Can never be repaired and never
sufficiently regretted

Canker of a long peace

Care neither for words nor menaces in
any matter

Cargo of imaginary gold dust was
exported from the James River

Casting up the matter "as pinchingly as
possibly might be"

Casual outbursts of eternal friendship

Certain number of powers, almost
exactly equal to each other

Certainly it was worth an eighty years'
war

Changed his positions and contradicted
himself day by day

Character of brave men to act, not to
expect

Charles the Fifth autocrat of half the
world

Chief seafaring nations of the world
were already protestant

Chieftains are dwarfed in the
estimation of followers

Children who had never set foot on the
shore

Christian sympathy and a small
assistance not being sufficient

Chronicle of events must not be
anticipated

Claimed the praise of moderation that
their demands were so few

Cold water of conventional and
commonplace encouragement

College of "peace-makers," who wrangled
more than all

Colonel Ysselstein, "dismissed for a
homicide or two"

Compassing a country's emancipation
through a series of defeats

Conceding it subsequently, after much
contestation

Conceit, and procrastination which
marked the royal character

Conciliation when war of extermination
was intended

Conclusive victory for the allies
seemed as predestined

Conde and Coligny

Condemned first and inquired upon after

Condemning all heretics to death

Conflicting claims of prerogative and
conscience

Conformity of Governments to the
principles of justice

Confused conferences, where neither
party was entirely sincere

Considerable reason, even if there were
but little justice

Considerations of state have never yet
failed the axe

Considerations of state as a reason

Considered it his special mission in
the world to mediate

Consign to the flames all prisoners
whatever (Papal letter)

Constant vigilance is the price of
liberty

Constitute themselves at once universal
legatees

Constitutional governments, move in the
daylight

Consumer would pay the tax, supposing
it were ever paid at all

Contained within itself the germs of a
larger liberty

Contempt for treaties however solemnly
ratified

Continuing to believe himself
invincible and infallible

Converting beneficent commerce into
baleful gambling

Could handle an argument as well as a
sword

Could paint a character with the ruddy
life-blood coloring

Could not be both judge and party in
the suit

Could do a little more than what was
possible

Country would bear his loss with
fortitude

Courage of despair inflamed the French

Courage and semblance of cheerfulness,
with despair in his heart

Court fatigue, to scorn pleasure

Covered now with the satirical dust of
centuries

Craft meaning, simply, strength

Created one child for damnation and
another for salvation

Crescents in their caps: Rather Turkish
than Popish

Crimes and cruelties such as Christians
only could imagine

Criminal whose guilt had been
established by the hot iron

Criminals buying Paradise for money

Cruelties exercised upon monks and
papists

Crusades made great improvement in the
condition of the serfs

Culpable audacity and exaggerated
prudence

Customary oaths, to be kept with the
customary conscientiousness

Daily widening schism between Lutherans
and Calvinists

Deadliest of sins, the liberty of
conscience

Deadly hatred of Puritans in England
and Holland

Deal with his enemy as if sure to
become his friend

Death rather than life with a false
acknowledgment of guilt

Decline a bribe or interfere with the
private sale of places

Decrees for burning, strangling, and
burying alive

Deeply criminal in the eyes of all
religious parties

Defeated garrison ever deserved more
respect from friend or foe

Defect of enjoying the flattery, of his
inferiors in station

Delay often fights better than an army
against a foreign invader

Demanding peace and bread at any price

Democratic instincts of the ancient
German savages

Denies the utility of prayers for the
dead

Denounced as an obstacle to peace

Depths theological party spirit could
descend

Depths of credulity men in all ages can
sink

Despised those who were grateful

Despot by birth and inclination
(Charles V.)

Determined to bring the very name of
liberty into contempt

Devote himself to his gout and to his
fair young wife

Difference between liberties and
liberty

Difficult for one friend to advise
another in three matters

Diplomacy of Spain and Rome--meant
simply dissimulation

Diplomatic adroitness consists mainly
in the power to deceive

Disciple of Simon Stevinus

Dismay of our friends and the
gratification of our enemies

Disordered, and unknit state needs no
shaking, but propping

Disposed to throat-cutting by the
ministers of the Gospel

Dispute between Luther and Zwingli
concerning the real presence

Disputing the eternal damnation of
young children

Dissenters were as bigoted as the
orthodox

Dissimulation and delay

Distinguished for his courage, his
cruelty, and his corpulence

Divine right of kings

Divine right

Do you want peace or war?  I am ready
for either

Doctrine of predestination in its
sternest and strictest sense

Don John of Austria

Don John was at liberty to be King of
England and Scotland

Done nothing so long as aught remained
to do

Drank of the water in which, he had
washed

Draw a profit out of the necessities of
this state

During this, whole war, we have never
seen the like

Dying at so very inconvenient a moment

Each in its turn becoming orthodox, and
therefore persecuting

Eat their own children than to forego
one high mass

Eight thousand human beings were
murdered

Elizabeth, though convicted, could
always confute

Elizabeth (had not) the faintest idea
of religious freedom

Eloquence of the biggest guns

Emperor of Japan addressed him as his
brother monarch

Emulation is not capability

Endure every hardship but hunger

Enemy of all compulsion of the human
conscience

England hated the Netherlands

English Puritans

Englishmen and Hollanders preparing to
cut each other's throats

Enmity between Lutherans and Calvinists

Enormous wealth (of the Church) which
engendered the hatred

Enriched generation after generation by
wealthy penitence

Enthusiasm could not supply the place
of experience

Envying those whose sufferings had
already been terminated

Epernon, the true murderer of Henry

Erasmus of Rotterdam

Erasmus encourages the bold friar

Establish not freedom for Calvinism,
but freedom for conscience

Estimating his character and judging
his judges

Even the virtues of James were his
worst enemies

Even to grant it slowly is to deny it
utterly

Even for the rape of God's mother, if
that were possible

Ever met disaster with so cheerful a
smile

Ever-swarming nurseries of mercenary
warriors

Every one sees what you seem, few
perceive what you are

Everybody should mind his own business

Everything else may happen  This alone
must happen

Everything was conceded, but nothing
was secured

Evil is coming, the sooner it arrives
the better

Evil has the advantage of rapidly
assuming many shapes

Excited with the appearance of a gem of
true philosophy

Excused by their admirers for their
shortcomings

Excuses to disarm the criticism he had
some reason to fear

Executions of Huss and Jerome of Prague

Exorcising the devil by murdering his
supposed victims

Extraordinary capacity for yielding to
gentle violence

Fable of divine right is invented to
sanction the system

Faction has rarely worn a more
mischievous aspect

Famous fowl in every pot

Fanatics of the new religion denounced
him as a godless man

Fate, free will, or absolute
foreknowledge

Father Cotton, who was only too ready
to betray the secrets

Fear of the laugh of the world at its
sincerity

Fed on bear's liver, were nearly
poisoned to death

Felix Mants, the anabaptist, is drowned
at Zurich

Fellow worms had been writhing for half
a century in the dust

Ferocity which even Christians could
not have surpassed

Few, even prelates were very dutiful to
the pope

Fiction of apostolic authority to bind
and loose

Fifty thousand persons in the provinces
(put to death)

Financial opposition to tyranny is apt
to be unanimous

Find our destruction in our immoderate
desire for peace

Fishermen and river raftsmen become
ocean adventurers

Fitted "To warn, to comfort, and
command"

Fitter to obey than to command

Five great rivers hold the Netherland
territory in their coils

Flattery is a sweet and intoxicating
potion

Fled from the land of oppression to the
land of liberty

Fool who useth not wit because he hath
it not

For myself I am unworthy of the honor
(of martyrdom)

For faithful service, evil recompense

For women to lament, for men to
remember

For us, looking back upon the Past,
which was then the Future

For his humanity towards the conquered
garrisons (censured)

Forbidding the wearing of mourning at
all

Forbids all private assemblies for
devotion

Force clerical--the power of clerks

Foremost to shake off the fetters of
superstition

Forget those who have done them good
service

Forgiving spirit on the part of the
malefactor

Fortune's buffets and rewards can take
with equal thanks

Four weeks' holiday--the first in
eleven years

France was mourning Henry and waiting
for Richelieu

French seem madmen, and are wise

Friendly advice still more intolerable

Full of precedents and declamatory
commonplaces

Furious fanaticism

Furious mob set upon the house of Rem
Bischop

Furnished, in addition, with a force of
two thousand prostitutes

Future world as laid down by rival
priesthoods

Gallant and ill-fated Lamoral Egmont

Gaul derided the Roman soldiers as a
band of pigmies

German-Lutheran sixteenth-century idea
of religious freedom

German finds himself sober--he believes
himself ill

German Highland and the German
Netherland

Gigantic vices are proudly pointed to
as the noblest

Give him advice if he asked it, and
money when he required

Glory could be put neither into pocket
nor stomach

God has given absolute power to no
mortal man

God, whose cause it was, would be
pleased to give good weather

God alone can protect us against those
whom we trust

God of wrath who had decreed the
extermination of all unbeliever

God of vengeance, of jealousy, and of
injustice

God Save the King!  It was the last
time

Gold was the only passkey to justice

Gomarites accused the Arminians of
being more lax than Papists

Govern under the appearance of obeying

Great transactions of a reign are
sometimes paltry things

Great science of political equilibrium

Great Privilege, the Magna Charta of
Holland

Great error of despising their enemy

Great war of religion and politics was
postponed

Great battles often leave the world
where they found it

Guarantees of forgiveness for every
imaginable sin

Guilty of no other crime than adhesion
to the Catholic faith

Habeas corpus

Had industry been honoured instead of
being despised

Haereticis non servanda fides

Hair and beard unshorn, according to
ancient Batavian custom

Halcyon days of ban, book and candle

Hanged for having eaten meat-soup upon
Friday

Hanging of Mary Dyer at Boston

Hangman is not the most appropriate
teacher of religion

Happy to glass themselves in so
brilliant a mirror

Hard at work, pouring sand through
their sieves

Hardly a distinguished family in Spain
not placed in mourning

Hardly a sound Protestant policy
anywhere but in Holland

Hardly an inch of French soil that had
not two possessors

Having conjugated his paradigm
conscientiously

He had omitted to execute heretics

He did his best to be friends with all
the world

He was a sincere bigot

He that stands let him see that he does
not fall

He was not always careful in the
construction of his sentences

He would have no persecution of the
opposite creed

He came as a conqueror not as a
mediator

He who spreads the snare always tumbles
into the ditch himself

He who would have all may easily lose
all

He knew men, especially he knew their
weaknesses

He had never enjoyed social converse,
except at long intervals

He would have no Calvinist inquisition
set up in its place

He who confessed well was absolved well

He did his work, but he had not his
reward

He sat a great while at a time.  He had
a genius for sitting

He was not imperial of aspect on canvas
or coin

He often spoke of popular rights with
contempt

He spent more time at table than the
Bearnese in sleep

Heidelberg Catechism were declared to
be infallible

Henry the Huguenot as the champion of
the Council of Trent

Her teeth black, her bosom white and
liberally exposed (Eliz.)

Heresy was a plant of early growth in
the Netherlands

Heretics to the English Church were
persecuted

Hibernian mode of expressing himself

High officers were doing the work of
private, soldiers

Highborn demagogues in that as in every
age affect adulation

Highest were not necessarily the least
slimy

His inordinate arrogance

His own past triumphs seemed now his
greatest enemies

His imagination may have assisted his
memory in the task

His insolence intolerable

His learning was a reproach to the
ignorant

His invectives were, however, much
stronger than his arguments

His personal graces, for the moment,
took the rank of virtues

His dogged, continuous capacity for
work

Historical scepticism may shut its eyes
to evidence

History is a continuous whole of which
we see only fragments

History is but made up of a few
scattered fragments

History never forgets and never
forgives

History has not too many really
important and emblematic men

History shows how feeble are barriers
of paper

Holland was afraid to give a part,
although offering the whole

Holland, England, and America, are all
links of one chain

Holy Office condemned all the
inhabitants of the Netherlands

Holy institution called the Inquisition

Honor good patriots, and to support
them in venial errors

Hope delayed was but a cold and meagre
consolation

Hope deferred, suddenly changing to
despair

How many more injured by becoming bad
copies of a bad ideal

Hugo Grotius

Human nature in its meanness and shame

Human ingenuity to inflict human misery

Human fat esteemed the sovereignst
remedy (for wounds)

Humanizing effect of science upon the
barbarism of war

Humble ignorance as the safest creed

Humility which was but the cloak to his
pride

Hundred thousand men had laid down
their lives by her decree

I did never see any man behave himself
as he did

I know how to console myself

I am a king that will be ever known not
to fear any but God

I hope and I fear

I would carry the wood to burn my own
son withal

I regard my country's profit, not my
own

I will never live, to see the end of my
poverty

Idea of freedom in commerce has dawned
upon nations

Idiotic principle of sumptuary
legislation

Idle, listless, dice-playing, begging,
filching vagabonds

If he had little, he could live upon
little

If to do be as grand as to imagine what
it were good to do

If he has deserved it, let them strike
off his head

Ignoble facts which strew the highways
of political life

Ignorance is the real enslaver of
mankind

Imagined, and did the work of truth

Imagining that they held the world's
destiny in their hands

Impatience is often on the part of the
non-combatants

Implication there was much, of
assertion very little

Imposed upon the multitudes, with whom
words were things

Impossible it is to practise arithmetic
with disturbed brains

Impossible it was to invent terms of
adulation too gross

In revolutions the men who win are
those who are in earnest

In character and general talents he was
beneath mediocrity

In times of civil war, to be neutral is
to be nothing

In Holland, the clergy had neither
influence nor seats

In this he was much behind his age or
before it

Incur the risk of being charged with
forwardness than neglect

Indecision did the work of indolence

Indignant that heretics had been
suffered to hang

Individuals walking in advance of their
age

Indoor home life imprisons them in the
domestic circle

Indulging them frequently with oracular
advice

Inevitable fate of talking castles and
listening ladies

Infamy of diplomacy, when diplomacy is
unaccompanied by honesty

Infinite capacity for pecuniary
absorption

Informer, in case of conviction, should
be entitled to one half

Inhabited by the savage tribes called
Samoyedes

Innocent generation, to atone for the
sins of their forefathers

Inquisition of the Netherlands is much
more pitiless

Inquisition was not a fit subject for a
compromise

Inquisitors enough; but there were no
light vessels in The Armada

Insane cruelty, both in the cause of
the Wrong and the Right

Insensible to contumely, and incapable
of accepting a rebuff

Insinuate that his orders had been
hitherto misunderstood

Insinuating suspicions when unable to
furnish evidence

Intellectual dandyisms of Bulwer

Intelligence, science, and industry
were accounted degrading

Intense bigotry of conviction

Intentions of a government which did
not know its own intentions

International friendship, the
self-interest of each

Intolerable tendency to puns

Invaluable gift which no human being
can acquire, authority

Invented such Christian formulas as
these (a curse)

Inventing long speeches for historical
characters

Invincible Armada had not only been
vanquished but annihilated

Irresistible force in collision with an
insuperable resistance

It was the true religion, and there was
none other

It is not desirable to disturb much of
that learned dust

It had not yet occurred to him that he
was married

It is n't strategists that are wanted
so much as believers

It is certain that the English hate us
(Sully)

Its humility, seemed sufficiently
ironical

James of England, who admired, envied,
and hated Henry

Jealousy, that potent principle

Jesuit Mariana--justifying the killing
of excommunicated kings

John Castel, who had stabbed Henry IV.

John Wier, a physician of Grave

John Robinson

John Quincy Adams

Judas Maccabaeus

July 1st, two Augustine monks were
burned at Brussels

Justified themselves in a solemn
consumption of time

Kindly shadow of oblivion

King who thought it furious madness to
resist the enemy

King had issued a general repudiation
of his debts

King set a price upon his head as a
rebel

King of Zion to be pinched to death
with red-hot tongs

King was often to be something much
less or much worse

King's definite and final intentions,
varied from day to day

Labored under the disadvantage of never
having existed

Labour was esteemed dishonourable

Language which is ever living because
it is dead

Languor of fatigue, rather than any
sincere desire for peace

Leading motive with all was supposed to
be religion

Learn to tremble as little at
priestcraft as at swordcraft

Leave not a single man alive in the
city, and to burn every house

Let us fool these poor creatures to
their heart's content

Licences accorded by the crown to carry
slaves to America

Life of nations and which we call the
Past

Like a man holding a wolf by the ears

Little army of Maurice was becoming the
model for Europe

Little grievances would sometimes
inflame more than vast

Local self-government which is the
life-blood of liberty

Logic of the largest battalions

Logic is rarely the quality on which
kings pride themselves

Logical and historical argument of
unmerciful length

Long succession of so many illustrious
obscure

Longer they delay it, the less easy
will they find it

Look through the cloud of dissimulation

Look for a sharp war, or a miserable
peace

Looking down upon her struggle with
benevolent indifference

Lord was better pleased with adverbs
than nouns

Loud, nasal, dictatorial tone, not at
all agreeable

Louis XIII.

Loving only the persons who flattered
him

Ludicrous gravity

Luther's axiom, that thoughts are
toll-free

Lutheran princes of Germany, detested
the doctrines of Geneva

Luxury had blunted the fine instincts
of patriotism

Made peace--and had been at war ever
since

Made no breach in royal and Roman
infallibility

Made to swing to and fro over a slow
fire

Magistracy at that moment seemed to
mean the sword

Magnificent hopefulness

Maintaining the attitude of an injured
but forgiving Christian

Make sheep of yourselves, and the wolf
will eat you

Make the very name of man a term of
reproach

Man is never so convinced of his own
wisdom

Man who cannot dissemble is unfit to
reign

Man had only natural wrongs (No natural
rights)

Man had no rights at all  He was
property

Mankind were naturally inclined to
calumny

Manner in which an insult shall be
dealt with

Many greedy priests, of lower rank, had
turned shop-keepers

Maritime heretics

Matter that men may rather pray for
than hope for

Matters little by what name a
government is called

Meantime the second civil war in France
had broken out

Mediocrity is at a premium

Meet around a green table except as
fencers in the field

Men were loud in reproof, who had been
silent

Men fought as if war was the normal
condition of humanity

Men who meant what they said and said
what they meant

Mendacity may always obtain over
innocence and credulity

Military virtue in the support of an
infamous cause

Misanthropical, sceptical philosopher

Misery had come not from their being
enemies

Mistake to stumble a second time over
the same stone

Mistakes might occur from occasional
deviations into sincerity

Mockery of negotiation in which nothing
could be negotiated

Modern statesmanship, even while it
practises, condemns

Monasteries, burned their invaluable
libraries

Mondragon was now ninety-two years old

Moral nature, undergoes less change
than might be hoped

More accustomed to do well than to
speak well

More easily, as he had no intention of
keeping the promise

More catholic than the pope

More fiercely opposed to each other
than to Papists

More apprehension of fraud than of
force

Most detestable verses that even he had
ever composed

Most entirely truthful child he had
ever seen

Motley was twice sacrificed to personal
feelings

Much as the blind or the deaf towards
colour or music

Myself seeing of it methinketh that I
dream

Names history has often found it
convenient to mark its epochs

National character, not the work of a
few individuals

Nations tied to the pinafores of
children in the nursery

Natural to judge only by the result

Natural tendency to suspicion of a
timid man

Nearsighted liberalism

Necessary to make a virtue of necessity

Necessity of extirpating heresy, root
and branch

Necessity of deferring to powerful
sovereigns

Necessity of kingship

Negotiated as if they were all immortal

Neighbour's blazing roof was likely
soon to fire their own

Neither kings nor governments are apt
to value logic

Neither wished the convocation, while
both affected an eagerness

Neither ambitious nor greedy

Never peace well made, he observed,
without a mighty war

Never did statesmen know better how not
to do

Never lack of fishers in troubled
waters

New Years Day in England, 11th January
by the New Style

Night brings counsel

Nine syllables that which could be more
forcibly expressed in on

No one can testify but a householder

No man can be neutral in civil
contentions

No law but the law of the longest purse

No two books, as he said, ever injured
each other

No retrenchments in his pleasures of
women, dogs, and buildings

No great man can reach the highest
position in our government

No man is safe (from news reporters)

No man could reveal secrets which he
did not know

No authority over an army which they
did not pay

No man pretended to think of the State

No synod had a right to claim
Netherlanders as slaves

No qualities whatever but birth and
audacity to recommend him

No generation is long-lived enough to
reap the harvest

No man ever understood the art of
bribery more thoroughly

No calumny was too senseless to be
invented

None but God to compel me to say more
than I choose to say

Nor is the spirit of the age to be
pleaded in defence

Not a friend of giving details larger
than my ascertained facts

Not distinguished for their docility

Not to let the grass grow under their
feet

Not a single acquaintance in the place,
and we glory in the fact

Not safe for politicians to call each
other hard names

Not his custom nor that of his
councillors to go to bed

Not of the genus Reptilia, and could
neither creep nor crouch

Not strong enough to sustain many more
such victories

Not to fall asleep in the shade of a
peace negotiation

Not many more than two hundred
Catholics were executed

Not upon words but upon actions

Not for a new doctrine, but for liberty
of conscience

Not of the stuff of which martyrs are
made (Erasmus)

Not so successful as he was picturesque

Nothing could equal Alexander's
fidelity, but his perfidy

Nothing cheap, said a citizen bitterly,
but sermons

Nothing was so powerful as religious
difference

Notre Dame at Antwerp

Nowhere was the persecution of heretics
more relentless

Nowhere were so few unproductive
consumers

O God! what does man come to!

Obscure were thought capable of dying
natural deaths

Obstinate, of both sexes, to be burned

Octogenarian was past work and past
mischief

Of high rank but of lamentably low
capacity

Often much tyranny in democracy

Often necessary to be blind and deaf

Oldenbarneveld; afterwards so
illustrious

On the first day four thousand men and
women were slaughtered

One-half to Philip and one-half to the
Pope and Venice (slaves)

One-third of Philip's effective navy
was thus destroyed

One golden grain of wit into a sheet of
infinite platitude

One could neither cry nor laugh within
the Spanish dominions

One of the most contemptible and
mischievous of kings (James I)

Only healthy existence of the French
was in a state of war

Only true religion

Only citadel against a tyrant and a
conqueror was distrust

Only kept alive by milk, which he drank
from a woman's breast

Only foundation fit for history,--
original contemporary document

Opening an abyss between government and
people

Opposed the subjection of the
magistracy by the priesthood

Oration, fertile in rhetoric and barren
in facts

Orator was, however, delighted with his
own performance

Others that do nothing, do all, and
have all the thanks

Others go to battle, says the
historian, these go to war

Our pot had not gone to the fire as
often

Our mortal life is but a string of
guesses at the future

Outdoing himself in dogmatism and
inconsistency

Over excited, when his prejudices were
roughly handled

Panegyrists of royal houses in the
sixteenth century

Pardon for crimes already committed, or
about to be committed

Pardon for murder, if not by poison,
was cheaper

Partisans wanted not accommodation but
victory

Party hatred was not yet glutted with
the blood it had drunk

Passion is a bad schoolmistress for the
memory

Past was once the Present, and once the
Future

Pathetic dying words of Anne Boleyn

Patriotism seemed an unimaginable idea

Pauper client who dreamed of justice at
the hands of law

Paving the way towards atheism (by
toleration)

Paying their passage through, purgatory

Peace founded on the only secure basis,
equality of strength

Peace was desirable, it might be more
dangerous than war

Peace seemed only a process for
arriving at war

Peace and quietness is brought into a
most dangerous estate

Peace-at-any-price party

Peace, in reality, was war in its worst
shape

Peace was unattainable, war was
impossible, truce was inevitable

Peace would be destruction

Perfection of insolence

Perpetually dropping small innuendos
like pebbles

Persons who discussed religious matters
were to be put to death

Petty passion for contemptible details

Philip II. gave the world work enough

Philip of Macedon, who considered no
city impregnable

Philip IV.

Philip, who did not often say a great
deal in a few words

Picturesqueness of crime

Placid unconsciousness on his part of
defeat

Plain enough that he is telling his own
story

Planted the inquisition in the
Netherlands

Played so long with other men's
characters and good name

Plea of infallibility and of authority
soon becomes ridiculous

Plundering the country which they came
to protect

Poisoning, for example, was absolved
for eleven ducats

Pope excommunicated him as a heretic

Pope and emperor maintain both
positions with equal logic

Portion of these revenues savoured much
of black-mail

Possible to do, only because we see
that it has been done

Pot-valiant hero

Power the poison of which it is so
difficult to resist

Power to read and write helped the
clergy to much wealth

Power grudged rather than given to the
deputies

Practised successfully the talent of
silence

Pray here for satiety, (said Cecil)
than ever think of variety

Preferred an open enemy to a
treacherous protector

Premature zeal was prejudicial to the
cause

Presents of considerable sums of money
to the negotiators made

Presumption in entitling themselves
Christian

Preventing wrong, or violence, even
towards an enemy

Priests shall control the state or the
state govern the priests

Princes show what they have in them at
twenty-five  or never

Prisoners were immediately hanged

Privileged to beg, because ashamed to
work

Proceeds of his permission to eat meat
on Fridays

Proclaiming the virginity of the
Virgin's mother

Procrastination was always his first
refuge

Progress should be by a spiral movement

Promises which he knew to be binding
only upon the weak

Proposition made by the wolves to the
sheep, in the fable

Protect the common tranquillity by
blood, purse, and life

Provided not one Huguenot be left alive
in France

Public which must have a slain
reputation to devour

Purchased absolution for crime and
smoothed a pathway to heaven

Puritanism in Holland was a very
different thing from England

Put all those to the torture out of
whom anything can be got

Putting the cart before the oxen

Queen is entirely in the hands of Spain
and the priests

Questioning nothing, doubting nothing,
fearing nothing

Quite mistaken: in supposing himself
the Emperor's child

Radical, one who would uproot, is a man
whose trade is dangerous

Rarely able to command, having never
learned to obey

Rashness alternating with hesitation

Rather a wilderness to reign over than
a single heretic

Readiness to strike and bleed at any
moment in her cause

Readiness at any moment to defend
dearly won liberties

Rearing gorgeous temples where paupers
are to kneel

Reasonable to pay our debts rather than
to repudiate them

Rebuked him for his obedience

Rebuked the bigotry which had already
grown

Recall of a foreign minister for
alleged misconduct in office

Reformer who becomes in his turn a
bigot is doubly odious

Reformers were capable of giving a
lesson even to inquisitors

Religion was made the strumpet of
Political Ambition

Religion was rapidly ceasing to be the
line of demarcation

Religion was not to be changed like a
shirt

Religious toleration, which is a phrase
of insult

Religious persecution of Protestants by
Protestants

Repentance, as usual, had come many
hours too late

Repentant males to be executed with the
sword

Repentant females to be buried alive

Repose under one despot guaranteed to
them by two others

Repose in the other world, "Repos
ailleurs"

Republic, which lasted two centuries

Republics are said to be ungrateful

Repudiation of national debts was never
heard of before

Requires less mention than Philip III
himself

Resolve to maintain the civil authority
over the military

Resolved thenceforth to adopt a system
of ignorance

Respect for differences in religious
opinions

Result was both to abandon the
provinces and to offend Philip

Revocable benefices or feuds

Rich enough to be worth robbing

Righteous to kill their own children

Road to Paris lay through the gates of
Rome

Rose superior to his doom and took
captivity captive

Round game of deception, in which
nobody was deceived

Royal plans should be enforced
adequately or abandoned entirely

Ruinous honors

Rules adopted in regard to pretenders
to crowns

Sacked and drowned ten infant princes

Sacrificed by the Queen for faithfully
obeying her orders

Safest citadel against an invader and a
tyrant is distrust

Sages of every generation, read the
future like a printed scroll

Saint Bartholomew's day

Sale of absolutions was the source of
large fortunes to the priests

Same conjury over ignorant baron and
cowardly hind

Scaffold was the sole refuge from the
rack

Scepticism, which delights in reversing
the judgment of centuries

Schism in the Church had become a
public fact

Schism which existed in the general
Reformed Church

Science of reigning was the science of
lying

Scoffing at the ceremonies and
sacraments of the Church

Secret drowning was substituted for
public burning

Secure the prizes of war without the
troubles and dangers

Security is dangerous

Seeking protection for and against the
people

Seem as if born to make the idea of
royalty ridiculous

Seemed bent on self-destruction

Seems but a change of masks, of
costume, of phraseology

Sees the past in the pitiless light of
the present

Self-assertion--the healthful but not
engaging attribute

Self-educated man, as he had been a
self-taught boy

Selling the privilege of eating eggs
upon fast-days

Senectus edam maorbus est

Sent them word by carrier pigeons

Sentiment of Christian self-complacency

Sentimentality that seems highly
apocryphal

Served at their banquets by hosts of
lackeys on their knees

Seven Spaniards were killed, and seven
thousand rebels

Sewers which have ever run beneath
decorous Christendom

Shall Slavery die, or the great
Republic?

Sharpened the punishment for reading
the scriptures in private

She relieth on a hope that will deceive
her

She declined to be his procuress

She knew too well how women were
treated in that country

Shift the mantle of religion from one
shoulder to the other

Shutting the stable-door when the steed
is stolen

Sick soldiers captured on the water
should be hanged

Sick and wounded wretches were burned
over slow fires

Simple truth was highest skill

Sixteen of their best ships had been
sacrificed

Slain four hundred and ten men with his
own hand

Slavery was both voluntary and
compulsory

Slender stock of platitudes

Small matter which human folly had
dilated into a great one

Smooth words, in the plentiful lack of
any substantial

So much responsibility and so little
power

So often degenerated into tyranny
(Calvinism)

So much in advance of his time as to
favor religious equality

So unconscious of her strength

Soldier of the cross was free upon his
return

Soldiers enough to animate the good and
terrify the bad

Solitary and morose, the necessary
consequence of reckless study

Some rude lessons from that vigorous
little commonwealth

Sometimes successful, even although
founded upon sincerity

Sonnets of Petrarch

Sovereignty was heaven-born, anointed
of God

Spain was governed by an established
terrorism

Spaniards seem wise, and are madmen

Sparing and war have no affinity
together

Spendthrift of time, he was an
economist of blood

Spirit of a man who wishes to be proud
of his country

St. Peter's dome rising a little nearer
to the clouds

St. Bartholomew was to sleep for seven
years longer

Stake or gallows (for) heretics to
transubstantiation

Stand between hope and fear

State can best defend religion by
letting it alone

States were justified in their almost
unlimited distrust

Steeped to the lips in sloth which
imagined itself to be pride

Storm by which all these treasures were
destroyed (in 7 days)

Strangled his nineteen brothers on his
accession

Strength does a falsehood acquire in
determined and skilful hand

String of homely proverbs worthy of
Sancho Panza

Stroke of a broken table knife
sharpened on a carriage wheel

Studied according to his inclinations
rather than by rule

Style above all other qualities seems
to embalm for posterity

Subtle and dangerous enemy who wore the
mask of a friend

Succeeded so well, and had been
requited so ill

Successful in this step, he is ready
for greater ones

Such a crime as this had never been
conceived (bankruptcy)

Such an excuse was as bad as the
accusation

Suicide is confession

Superfluous sarcasm

Suppress the exercise of the Roman
religion

Sure bind, sure find

Sword in hand is the best pen to write
the conditions of peace

Take all their imaginations and
extravagances for truths

Talked impatiently of the value of my
time

Tanchelyn

Taxation upon sin

Taxed themselves as highly as fifty per
cent

Taxes upon income and upon consumption

Tempest of passion and prejudice

Ten thousand two hundred and twenty
individuals were burned

Tension now gave place to exhaustion

That vile and mischievous animal called
the people

That crowned criminal, Philip the
Second

That unholy trinity--Force; Dogma, and
Ignorance

That cynical commerce in human lives

That he tries to lay the fault on us is
pure malice

The tragedy of Don Carlos

The worst were encouraged with their
good success

The history of the Netherlands is
history of liberty

The great ocean was but a Spanish lake

The divine speciality of a few
transitory mortals

The sapling was to become the tree

The nation which deliberately carves
itself in pieces

The expenses of James's household

The Catholic League and the Protestant
Union

The blaze of a hundred and fifty
burning vessels

The magnitude of this wonderful
sovereign's littleness

The defence of the civil authority
against the priesthood

The assassin, tortured and torn by four
horses

The Gaul was singularly unchaste

The vivifying becomes afterwards the
dissolving principle

The bad Duke of Burgundy, Philip
surnamed "the Good,"

The greatest crime, however, was to be
rich

The more conclusive arbitration of
gunpowder

The disunited provinces

The noblest and richest temple of the
Netherlands was a wreck

The voice of slanderers

The calf is fat and must be killed

The illness was a convenient one

The egg had been laid by Erasmus,
hatched by Luther

The perpetual reproductions of history

The very word toleration was to sound
like an insult

The most thriving branch of national
industry (Smuggler)

The pigmy, as the late queen had been
fond of nicknaming him

The slightest theft was punished with
the gallows

The art of ruling the world by doing
nothing

The wisest statesmen are prone to
blunder in affairs of war

The Alcoran was less cruel than the
Inquisition

The People had not been invented

The small children diminished rapidly
in numbers

The busy devil of petty economy

The record of our race is essentially
unwritten

The truth in shortest about matters of
importance

The time for reasoning had passed

The effect of energetic, uncompromising
calumny

The evils resulting from a confederate
system of government

The vehicle is often prized more than
the freight

The faithful servant is always a
perpetual ass

The dead men of the place are my
intimate friends

The loss of hair, which brings on
premature decay

The personal gifts which are nature's
passport everywhere

The nation is as much bound to be
honest as is the individual

The fellow mixes blood with his colors!

Their existence depended on war

Their own roofs were not quite yet in a
blaze

Theological hatred was in full blaze
throughout the country

Theology and politics were one

There is no man who does not desire to
enjoy his own

There was but one king in Europe, Henry
the Bearnese

There are few inventions in morals

There was no use in holding language of
authority to him

There was apathy where there should
have been enthusiasm

There is no man fitter for that purpose
than myself

Therefore now denounced the man whom he
had injured

These human victims, chained and
burning at the stake

They had come to disbelieve in the
mystery of kingcraft

They chose to compel no man's
conscience

They could not invent or imagine
toleration

They knew very little of us, and that
little wrong

They have killed him, 'e ammazato,'
cried Concini

They were always to deceive every one,
upon every occasion

They liked not such divine right nor
such gentle-mindedness

They had at last burned one more
preacher alive

Things he could tell which are too
odious and dreadful

Thirty thousand masses should be said
for his soul

Thirty-three per cent. interest was
paid (per month)

Thirty Years' War tread on the heels of
the forty years

This Somebody may have been one whom we
should call Nobody

This, then, is the reward of forty
years' service to the State

This obstinate little republic

This wonderful sovereign's littleness
oppresses the imagination

Those who fish in troubled waters only
to fill their own nets

Those who "sought to swim between two
waters"

Those who argue against a foregone
conclusion

Thought that all was too little for him

Thousands of burned heretics had not
made a single convert

Three hundred fighting women

Three hundred and upwards are hanged
annually in London

Three or four hundred petty sovereigns
(of Germany)

Throw the cat against their legs

Thus Hand-weapen, hand-throwing, became
Antwerp

Time and myself are two

Tis pity he is not an Englishman

To think it capable of error, is the
most devilish heresy of all

To stifle for ever the right of free
enquiry

To attack England it was necessary to
take the road of Ireland

To hear the last solemn commonplaces

To prefer poverty  to the wealth
attendant upon trade

To shirk labour, infinite numbers
become priests and friars

To doubt the infallibility of Calvin
was as heinous a crime

To negotiate with Government in England
was to bribe

To milk, the cow as long as she would
give milk

To work, ever to work, was the primary
law of his nature

To negotiate was to bribe right and
left, and at every step

To look down upon their inferior and
lost fellow creatures

Toil and sacrifices of those who have
preceded us

Tolerate another religion that his own
may be tolerated

Tolerating religious liberty had never
entered his mind

Toleration--that intolerable term of
insult

Toleration thought the deadliest heresy
of all

Torquemada's administration (of the
inquisition)

Torturing, hanging, embowelling of men,
women, and children

Tranquil insolence

Tranquillity rather of paralysis than
of health

Tranquillity of despotism to the
turbulence of freedom

Triple marriages between the respective
nurseries

Trust her sword, not her enemy's word

Twas pity, he said, that both should be
heretics

Twenty assaults upon fame and had forty
books killed under him

Two witnesses sent him to the stake,
one witness to the rack

Tyrannical spirit of Calvinism

Tyranny, ever young and ever old,
constantly reproducing herself

Uncouple the dogs and let them run

Under the name of religion (so many
crimes)

Understood the art of managing men,
particularly his superiors

Undue anxiety for impartiality

Unduly dejected in adversity

Unequivocal policy of slave
emancipation

Unimaginable outrage as the most
legitimate industry

Universal suffrage was not dreamed of
at that day

Unlearned their faith in bell, book,
and candle

Unproductive consumption being
accounted most sagacious

Unproductive consumption was alarmingly
increasing

Unremitted intellectual labor in an
honorable cause

Unwise impatience for peace

Upon their knees, served the queen with
wine

Upon one day twenty-eight master cooks
were dismissed

Upper and lower millstones of royal
wrath and loyal subserviency

Use of the spade

Usual phraseology of enthusiasts

Usual expedient by which bad
legislation on one side countered

Utter disproportions between the king's
means and aims

Utter want of adaptation of his means
to his ends

Uttering of my choler doth little ease
my grief or help my case

Uunmeaning phrases of barren benignity

Vain belief that they were men at
eighteen or twenty

Valour on the one side and discretion
on the other

Villagers, or villeins

Visible atmosphere of power the poison
of which

Volatile word was thought preferable to
the permanent letter

Vows of an eternal friendship of
several weeks' duration

Waiting the pleasure of a capricious
and despotic woman

Walk up and down the earth and destroy
his fellow-creatures

War was the normal and natural
condition of mankind

War was the normal condition of
Christians

War to compel the weakest to follow the
religion of the strongest

Was it astonishing that murder was more
common than fidelity?

Wasting time fruitlessly is sharpening
the knife for himself

We were sold by their negligence who
are now angry with us

We believe our mothers to have been
honest women

We are beginning to be vexed

We must all die once

We have been talking a little bit of
truth to each other

We have the reputation of being a good
housewife

We mustn't tickle ourselves to make
ourselves laugh

Wealth was an unpardonable sin

Wealthy Papists could obtain immunity
by an enormous fine

Weapons

Weary of place without power

Weep oftener for her children than is
the usual lot of mothers

Weight of a thousand years of error

What exchequer can accept chronic
warfare and escape bankruptcy

What could save the House of Austria,
the cause of Papacy

What was to be done in this world and
believed as to the next

When persons of merit suffer without
cause

When all was gone, they began to eat
each other

When the abbot has dice in his pocket,
the convent will play

Whether dead infants were hopelessly
damned

Whether murders or stratagems, as if
they were acts of virtue

Whether repentance could effect
salvation

While one's friends urge moderation

Who the "people" exactly were

Who loved their possessions better than
their creed

Whole revenue was pledged to pay the
interest, on his debts

Whose mutual hatred was now artfully
inflamed by partisans

William of Nassau, Prince of Orange

William Brewster

Wise and honest a man, although he be
somewhat longsome

Wiser simply to satisfy himself

Wish to sell us the bear-skin before
they have killed the bear

Wish to appear learned in matters of
which they are ignorant

With something of feline and feminine
duplicity

Wonder equally at human capacity to
inflict and to endure misery

Wonders whether it has found its harbor
or only lost its anchor

Word peace in Spanish mouths simply
meant the Holy Inquisition

Word-mongers who, could clothe one
shivering thought

Words are always interpreted to the
disadvantage of the weak

Work of the aforesaid Puritans and a
few Jesuits

World has rolled on to fresher fields
of carnage and ruin

Worn crescents in their caps at Leyden

Worn nor caused to be worn the collar
of the serf

Worship God according to the dictates
of his conscience

Would not help to burn fifty or sixty
thousand Netherlanders

Wrath of the Jesuits at this exercise
of legal authority

Wrath of bigots on both sides

Wrath of that injured personage as he
read such libellous truths

Wringing a dry cloth for drops of
evidence

Write so illegibly or express himself
so awkwardly

Writing letters full of injured
innocence

Yes, there are wicked men about

Yesterday is the preceptor of To-morrow

You must show your teeth to the
Spaniard




If you wish to read the entire context of any of these quotations,
select a short segment and copy it into your clipboard memory--then open
following  eBook and paste the phrase into your computer's find or
search operation.


Entire History of the Netherlands:
https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/jm00v10.txt