Dowager Famous Quotes & Sayings
55 Dowager Famous Sayings, Quotes and Quotation.
Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour— William Shakespeare
Draws on apace; four happy days bring in
Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow
This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man revenue.
I love being in scenes where I get to be part of a Maggie Smith put-down. A Dowager Countess put-down is always a special moment. Especially if you're working on set and she managed to do one off set at you.— Allen Leech
Dowager grumbled a bit about that, using the same peevish— Julia Quinn
On a table behind the dowager stood a vase containing three white lilies. The flowers were large and fleshy white, like little animals from an alien land that were deep in meditation.— Haruki Murakami
An excellent servant is always present, yet rarely seen or heard. Much like a specter who happens to enjoy cleaning." - The Dowager Marchioness of Wallingham to her butler.— Elisa Braden
Tell me, Mitch," said Bertrand, reading my thoughts, "is there anyone on this train that you do not want to fuck?"— James Lear
"I'm not crazy about the dowager.
It was a cruel world though. More than half of all children died before they could reach maturity, thanks to chronic epidemics and malnutrition. People dropped like flies from polio and tuberculosis and smallpox and measles. There probably weren't many people who lived past forty. Women bore so many children, they became toothless old hags by the time they were in their thirties. People often had to resort to violence to survive. Tiny children were forced to do such heavy labor that their bones became deformed, and little girls were forced to become prostitutes on a daily basis. Little boys too, I suspect. Most people led minimal lives in worlds that had nothing to do with richness of perception or spirit. City streets were full of cripples and beggars and criminals. Only a small fraction of the population could gaze at the moon with deep feeling or enjoy a Shakespeare play or listen to the beautiful music of Dowland.— Haruki Murakami
Is my gardener's pride to be sacrificed on the altar of Mr Molesley's ambitions?— Julian Fellowes
- The Dowager Countess(Maggie Smith)
Few of her achievements have been recognised, and when they are, the credit is invariably given to the men serving her. This is largely due to a basic handicap: that she was a woman and could only rule in the name of her sons ... In terms of groundbreaking achievements, political sincerity and personal courage, Empress Dowager Cixi set a standard that has barely been matched.— Jung Chang
Mrs. Cadwallader said, privately, 'You will certainly go mad in that house alone, my dear. You will see visions. We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by. To be sure, for younger sons and women who have no money, it is a sort of provision to go mad: they are taken care of then. But you must not run into that. I daresay you are a little bored here with our good dowager; but think what a bore you might become yourself to your fellow-creatures if you were always playing tragedy queen and taking things sublimely. Sitting alone in that library at Lowick you may fancy yourself ruling the weather; you must get a few people round you who wouldn't believe you if you told them. That is a good lowering medicine.— George Eliot
It is an adventure called Bertie's Botheration. A haunting, gothic tale of ... " She stopped for the dowager was frantically gesturing to her heart and grinning.— Anya Wylde
"You have read it! It is my favourite book. Ah, I see you love it too. Yes ... yes, I understand you could never tell anyone that it is your favourite. Not lofty enough. I keep a few acceptable names in my head every time someone asks me what my favourite book is, but one does not really confess what book they actually really like and have read over and over ...
Your tail, is becoming too heavy to wag.— Empress Dowager Cixi
And I hope you will not think me foolish when I also extend my thanks.— Julia Quinn
Thank you, Michael, for letting my son love her first.
- from Janet Stirling, dowager Countess of Kilmartin, to Michael Stirling, Earl of Kilmartin
I've always wanted to do something where I aged a lot, went from young girl to dowager.— Charles Busch
We are late, Alexandra," said the dowager duchess as she stood in Alex's drawing room idly examining a magnificent fourteenth-century sculpture reposing on a satinwood table. "And I don't mind telling you, now that the time is upon us, I have a worse feeling about this now than I did earlier. And my instincts are never wrong.— Judith McNaught
Violet, the Dowager Countess: 'I have plenty of friends I don't like.— Jessica Fellowes
Innumerable surveys have made it quite clear that when a respectable elderly man makes up to a giggling young lady, it is not the giggling young lady so accosted that is offended by the action, but rather the granite-faced dowager, standing unnoticed by her side, who is. It is she who makes derogatory remarks concerning dirty old men, and is quite likely to attack him with an umbrella.— Isaac Asimov
Then a far more grotesque and insulting marriage was arranged between the twenty-year-old John Woodville and Katherine Neville, Warwick's aunt and the dowager duchess of Norfolk. Katherine was not only a four-time widow but also about sixty-five years old.— Dan Jones
At dinner one night at Osborne House, the Queen entertained a famous admiral whose hearing was impaired. Politely, Victoria had asked about his fleet and its activities; then, shifting the subject, she asked about the admiral's sister, an elderly dowager of awesome dignity. The admiral thought she was inquiring about his flagship, which was in need of overhaul. "Well, ma'am," he said, "as soon as I get back I'm going to have her hauled out, roll her on her side and have the barnacles scraped off her bottom." Victoria stared at him for a second and then, for minutes afterward, the dining room shook with her unstoppable peals of laughter.— Robert K. Massie
But decent motives don't always produce decent results. And the body is not the only target of rape. Violence does not always take visible form, and not all wounds gush blood." ~the dowager— Haruki Murakami
Yes, ma'am," he said, and folded his hands and stopped where he was, listening, waiting while a very sick woman tried to gather her faculties.— C.J. Cherryh
"First off, tell the dowager she's a right damn bastard."
It was no time for a translator to argue. Mitigation, however, was a reasonable tactic. "Aiji-ma, Sabin-aiji has heard our suspicions regarding Tamun and received assurances from me and Gin-aiji that we have not arranged a coup of our own. She addresses you with an untranslatable term sometimes meaning extreme disrepute, sometimes indicating respect for an opponent."
Ilisidi's mouth drew down in wicked satisfaction. "Return the compliment, paidhi."
"Captain, she says you're a right damn bastard, too.
Have you stopped the trial?" the duchess said.— Judith McNaught
"Stopped the trial!" he expostulated. "My dear duchess, it would take the prince or God to stop this trial."
"They will have to settle for Lady Thornton," the dowager snapped.
At the Sandwich Islands, Kaahumanu, the gigantic old dowager queen - a woman of nearly four hundred pounds weight, and who is said to be still living at Mowee - was accustomed, in some of her terrific gusts of temper, to snatch up an ordinary sized man who had offended her, and snap his spine across her knee. Incredible as this may seem, it is a fact. While at Lahainaluna - the residence of this monstrous Jezebel - a humpbacked wretch was pointed out to me, who, some twenty-five years previously, had had the vertebrae of his backbone very seriously discomposed by his gentle mistress. The— Herman Melville
So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens - four dowager and three regnant - and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.— Barbara W. Tuchman
The dowager rose and slipped from her pew. There was the sound of tearing silk as she threw up her arms to embrace her son. Then:— Eva Ibbotson
"Oh, Rupert, darling," she exclaimed in tones of theatrical despair, "don't you see? The game's up!
Violet pulled a face. "Of course I have great ambition that my children marry well and happily, but I am not the sort who'd marry her daughter off to a seventy-year-old man just because he was a duke!"— Julia Quinn
"Did the dowager countess do that?" Benedict couldn't recall any seventy-year-old dukes making recent trips to the altar.
"No," Violet admitted, "but she would. Whereas I - "
Benedict bit back a smile as his mother pointed to herself with great flourish.
"I would allow my children to marry paupers if it would bring them happiness."
Benedict raised a brow.
"They would be well-principled and hardworking paupers, of course," Violet explained. "No gamblers need apply."
Benedict didn't want to laugh at his mother, so instead he coughed discreetly into his handkerchief.
She smiled serenely. "I shall put aside my feelings for the dowager countess if you care for one of her daughters ... " She looked up hopefully. "Do you care for one of her daughters?"— Julia Quinn
"I have no idea," Benedict admitted. "I never got her name. Just her glove."
Violet gave him a stern look. "I'm not even going to ask how you obtained her glove."
"It was all very innocent, I assure you."
Violet's expression was dubious in the extreme. "I have far too many sons to believe that," she muttered.
So she will," said the Dowager. "You'll see that young man in the Cabinet before very long. Such a handsome couple on a public platform, and very sound, I'm told, about pigs, and that's so important, the British breakfast-table being what it is.— Dorothy L. Sayers
Always wise aunts come in many guises. There are maiden aunts, dowager aunts, and that delightful creature, the eccentric aunt. I fear I fall into the latter category.— Sara Sheridan
Even Sally wound't want to cross fans with the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale. The woman had a tongue of steel and drank the blood of young virgins for breakfast.— Lauren Willig
He described the experience as being 'a little bit less fun, perhaps, than chain-smoking for ninety minutes while handcuffed to a dowager with asthma who used to teach Health and smells incontinent.— Adam Levin
M F K Fisher is the dowager queen of writers on browsing and slicing.— Philip Howard, 20th Earl Of Arundel
Mainline American Protestantism, as is often the case, plodded wearily along as if nothing had changed. Like an aging dowager, living in a decaying mansion on the edge of town, bankrupt and penniless, house decaying around her but acting as if her family still controlled the city, our theologians and church leaders continued to think and act as if we were in charge, as if the old arrangements were still valid.— Stanley Hauerwas
Her Majesty to the theatre. The performance took place on a stage erected in the courtyard, and Her Majesty closed in one part of her veranda for the use of the guests and Court ladies. During the performance I began to feel very drowsy, and eventually fell fast asleep leaning against one of the pillars. I awoke rather suddenly to find that something had been dropped into my mouth, but on investigation I found it was nothing worse than a piece of candy, which I immediately proceeded to eat. On approaching Her Majesty, she asked me how I had enjoyed the candy, and told me not to sleep, but to have a good time like the rest. I never saw Her Majesty in better humor. She played with us just like a young girl, and one could hardly recognize in her the severe Empress Dowager we knew her to be.— Der Ling
Five years with the dowager - Good God, she ought to be given a title in her own right as a penance for such as that. No one had done more for England.— Julia Quinn
She inched forward, although she wasn't sure why. If the dowager started spouting off about the highwayman and his resemblance to her favorite son, it wasn't as if she would be able to stop her. But still, the proximity at least gave the illusion that she might be able to prevent disaster.— Julia Quinn
Swirling furiously among the stairs and corridors of her exquisite home like a small and angry white bat Sybilla, Dowager Lady Culter, was not above spitting at her unfortunate son when he chose to sit down in his own great hall to take his boots off. 'If Madge Mumblecrust comes down those stairs once again for a morsel of fowl's liver with ginger, or pressed meats with almond-milk, I shall retire to a little wicker house in the forest and cast spells which will sink Venice into the sea for ever, and Madame Donati with it. The Church,' said Sybilla definitely, 'should excommunicate girls who do not replace lids on sticky jars and wash their hair every day with the best towels.— Dorothy Dunnett
He is like some sherry-crazed old dowager who has lost the family silver at roulette, and who now decides to double up by betting the house as well.— Boris Johnson
When it comes to jewellery, less is more as you get older. Just before I go out to a party, I look at myself in the mirror and take off half of the jewellery I'm wearing. Anything that rattles or clanks is just too dowager duchess.— Jerry Hall
The dowager said, "I was tremendously struck by what you said at the gym the other day. About powerlessness. About how powerlessness inflicts such damage on people. Do you remember?" Aomame nodded. "I do." "Do you mind if I ask you a question? It will be a very direct question. To save time." "Ask whatever you like," Aomame said. "Are you a feminist, or a lesbian?" Aomame blushed slightly and shook her head. "I don't think so. My thoughts on such matters are strictly my own. I'm not a doctrinaire feminist, and I'm not a lesbian.— Haruki Murakami
I can't imagine finding anybody to take your place."— Haruki Murakami
"You might not find a person that easily, but you could probably find a way without too much trouble," Aomama noted.
The dowager looked at Aomame calmly, her lips forming a satisfied smile. "That may be true," she said, "but I almost surely could never find anthing to take the place of what we are sharing here and now. You are you and only you. I'm very grateful for that. More grateful than I can say.
If, as the dowager had said, we are nothing but gene carriers, why do so many of us have to lead such strangely shaped lives? Wouldn't our genetic purpose - to transmit DNA - be served just as well if we lived simple lives, not bothering our heads with a lot of extraneous thoughts, devoted entirely to preserving life and procreating? Did it benefit the genes in any way for us to lead such intricately warped, even bizarre, lives?— Haruki Murakami
Violet, the Dowager Countess: I mean, one way or another, everyone goes down the aisle with half the story hidden.— Jessica Fellowes
A well-read highwayman, who would have thought?" the dowager commented.— Anya Wylde
"Oh, he absolutely adores books. He plans to retire when he has enough money and furnish his library with hundreds of books. He has already started a collection by stealing all he can find off lords and such.
Cities were like women, he insisted; each one had its own unique scent. Oldtown was as flowery as a perfumed dowager. Lannisport was a milkmaid, fresh and earthy, with woodsmoke in her hair. King's Landing reeked like some unwashed whore. But White Harbor's scent was sharp and salty, and a little fishy too. "She smells the way a mermaid ought to smell," Roro said. "She smells of the sea.— George R R Martin
For another - you can move faster than she can. You are as recognizable as she is. And you are willing to take cover. We are not so certain about the dowager.— C.J. Cherryh
Now they [the Powers] have started the aggression, and the extinction of our nation is imminent. If we just fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to see our ancestors after death. If we must perish, why not fight to the death?— Empress Dowager Cixi
![Dowager Sayings By Empress Dowager Cixi: Now they [the Powers] have started the aggression, and the extinction of our nation is](https://www.greatsayings.net/images/dowager-sayings-by-empress-dowager-cixi-1903581.jpg "Dowager Sayings By Empress Dowager Cixi: Now they [the Powers] have started the aggression, and the extinction of our nation is")
How slow— William Shakespeare
This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,
Like to a stepdame, or a dowager,
Long withering out a young man's revenue.
Wilhelmina swooned. The Dowager was stunned. Andrew punched Nathaniel again. "I should call you out!" He shouted over Nathaniel's prone form. Elinor fled the room.— Elizabeth Johns
Whoever makes me unhappy for a day, I will make suffer a lifetime.— Empress Dowager Cixi
My personal style is over-the-top dowager. The old days they said get dressed and take one thing off, I say get dressed and put one thing on.— Joan Rivers
By mid-June, the mercury had soared up to the nineties and lingered there, like a fat dowager in her favorite armchair.— Kat Ross
Philippa Somerville was annoyed. To her friends the Nixons, who owned Liddel Keep, and with whom Kate had deposited her for one night, she had given an accurate description of Sir William Scott of Kincurd, his height, his skill, his status, and his general suitability as an escort for Philippa Somerville from Liddesdale to Midculter Castle. And the said William Scott had not turned up. She fumed all the morning of that fine first day of May, and by afternoon was driven to revealing her general dissatisfaction with Scotland, the boring nature of Joleta, her extreme dislike of one of the Crawfords and the variable and unreliable nature of the said William Scott. She agreed that the Dowager Lady Culter was adorable, and Mariotta nice, and that she liked the baby.— Dorothy Dunnett
Great minds think alike-especially when they are female.— Christina Dodd
The necessity of getting up. He made it that far. Ended up with Banichi's arm around him, Banichi standing on one leg. The dowager-aiji said something rude about young men falling at her feet, and go sit down, SHE was in command of the plane.— C.J. Cherryh
