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.

Quotes

• Toutes les fois que je donne une place vacante, je fais cent mècontents et un ingrat.
  • Every time that I fill a high office, I make one hundred men discontented and one ungrateful.
    • Quoted in Voltaire, Le Siécle de Louis XIV (1751), ch.26

• 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.
    • Address to the Parliament of Paris (13 April, 1655); 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 ungrammatically as "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