Louis XIV of France

Louis XIV of France

Louis XIV of France (baptised as Louis-Dieudonné) (5 September 1638 – 1 September 1715) ruled as King of France and of the Navarre from 1643. Louis established the French absolute monarchy and made France the main political power in western Europe in his time.

Sourced

• Il n'y a plus de Pyrénées.
  • The Pyrenees have ceased to exist.
    • On his grandson becoming King of Spain, quoted in Voltaire, Le Siècle de Louis XIV (1751), ch.28

• Je m'en vais, mais l'État demeurera toujours.
  • I am going away, but the State will always remain.
    • Marquis de Dangeau. Mémoire sur la mort de Louis XIV (page 24).

• Je mettrais plutôt toute l'Europe d'accord que deux femmes.
  • I could sooner reconcile all Europe than two women.
    • Comte de Mirabeau. Esprit de Mirabeau (v.1, page 246)

Disputed

• L'Etat, c'est moi.
  • I am the state.
    • Attr. by Jacques-Antoine Dulaure, Histoire de Paris (1834), vol.6, p.298; probably apocryphal; also more literally translated as "The State, it is I." or "The State; it is me."

• J'ai failli attendre.
  • I almost had to wait.
    • Regarded as apocryphal by E. Fournier, L'Esprit dans l'Histoire (4th ed. 1884). ch.xlviii