My dearest dearest dear Albert sat on a footstool by my side and his excessive love and affection gave me feelings of heavenly love and happiness I never could have hoped to have felt before! He clasped me in his arms and we kissed each other again and again! His beauty... his sweetness and gentleness - really how can I ever be thankful enough to have such a husband! to be called names of tenderness, I have never yet heard used to me before - was bliss beyond belief! Oh! This was the happiest day of my life! May God help me to do my duty as I ought and be worthy of such blessings.
Queen VictoriaThere is, however, another subject on which the Queen feels most strongly, and that is this horrible, brutalizing, un-Christian-like vivisectionโฆIt must really not be permitted. It is a disgrace to a civilized country.
Queen VictoriaFor a man to strike any women is most brutal, and I, as well as everyone else, think this far worse than any attempt to shoot, which, wicked as it is, is at least more comprehensible and more courageous.
Queen VictoriaMen never think, at least seldom think, what a hard task it is for us women to go through this very often. God's will be done, and if He decrees that we are to have a great number of children why we must try to bring them up as useful and exemplary members of society.
Queen VictoriaWe poor creatures are born for man's pleasure and amusement, and destined to go through endless sufferings and trials.
Queen VictoriaBeware of artists, they mix with all classes of society and are therefore most dangerous.
Queen VictoriaGive my people plenty of beer, good beer, and cheap beer, and you will have no revolution among them.
Queen VictoriaYou will find as the children grow up that as a rule children are a bitter disappointment - their greatest object being to do precisely what their parents do not wish and have anxiously tried to prevent.
Queen VictoriaI am every day more convinced that we women, if we are to be good women, feminine and amiable and domestic, are not fitted to reign; at least it is they that drive themselves to the work which it entails.
Queen VictoriaWhen I think of a merry, happy, and free young girl - and look at the ailing aching state a young wife is generally doomed to - which you can't deny is the penalty of marriage.
Queen VictoriaDo not to let your feelings (very natural and usual ones) of momentary irritation and discomfort be seen by others don't (as you so often did and do) let every little feeling be read in your face and seen in your manner . . .
Queen VictoriaThe Queen has done all she could on the dreadful subject of vivisection, and hopes that Mr. Gladstone will speak strongly against such a practice which is a disgrace to humanity.
Queen VictoriaI positively think that ladies who are always enceinte quite disgusting; it is more like a rabbit or guinea-pig than anything else and really it is not very nice.
Queen VictoriaAffairs go on, and all will take some shape or other, but it keeps one in hot water all the time.
Queen Victoria[On alcohol:] Total abstinence is an impossibility and ... it will not do to insist on it as a general practice.
Queen VictoriaHis purity was too great, his aspiration too high for this poor, miserable world! His great soul is now only enjoying that for which it was worthy!
Queen VictoriaThe Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of Woman's Rights with all its attendant horrors on which her poor, feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety.
Queen VictoriaThe greatest maxim of all is that children should be brought up as simply and in as domestic a way as possible, and that (not interfering with their lessons) they should be as much as possible with their parents, and learn to place the greatest confidence in them in all things.
Queen VictoriaOh! If those selfish men, who are the cause of all one's misery, only knew what their poor slaves go through! What suffering, what humiliation to the delicate feelings of a poor woman, above all a young one, especially with those nasty doctors.
Queen VictoriaThe danger to the country, to Europe, to her vast Empire, which is involved in having all these great interests entrusted to the shaking hand of an old, wild, and incomprehensible man of 82, is very great!
Queen VictoriaNothing will turn a man's home into a castle more quickly and effectively than a dachshund.
Queen VictoriaWe placed the wreaths upon the splendid granite sarcophagus, and at its feet, and felt that only the earthly robe we loved so much was there. The pure, tender, loving spirit which loved us so tenderly, is above us - loving us, praying for us, and free from all suffering and woe - yes, that is a comfort, and that first birthday in another world must have been a far brighter one than any in this poor world below!
Queen VictoriaThe Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone in checking this mad, wicked folly of 'Women's Rights'. It is a subject which makes the Queen so furious that she cannot contain herself.
Queen VictoriaI would venture to warn against too great intimacy with artists as it is very seductive and a little dangerous.
Queen VictoriaThe poor fatherless baby of eight months is now the utterly broken-hearted and crushed widow of forty-two! My life as a happy one is ended! the world is gone for me! If I must live on (and I will do nothing to make me worse than I am), it is henceforth for our poor fatherless children - for my unhappy country, which has lost all in losing him - and in only doing what I know and feel he would wish.
Queen VictoriaI think people really marry far too much; it is such a lottery after all, and for a poor woman a very doubtful happiness.
Queen VictoriaWere women to "unsex" themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen, and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection.
Queen VictoriaI love peace and quiet, I hate politics and turmoil. We women are not made for governing, and if we are good women, we must dislike these masculine occupations.
Queen VictoriaSince it has pleased Providence to place me in this station, I shall do my utmost to fulfil my duty towards my country; I am very young and perhaps in many, though not in all things, inexperienced, but I am sure that very few have more real good will and more real desire to do what is fit and right than I have.
Queen VictoriaThe Government should take a firm, bold line. This delay - this uncertainty, by which, abroad, we are losing our prestige and our position, while Russia is advancing and will be before Constantinople in no time! Then the Government will be fearfully blamed and the Queen so humiliated that she thinks she would abdicate at once.
Queen Victoria