James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
Louis XIV
Il n’y a plus de Pyrénées—There are no longer any Pyrenees.On the departure of the Duke of Anjou from Paris for Spain.
J’ai failli attendre—I was all but kept waiting.As his carriage drove up just at the last moment.
La nation ne fait pas corps en France; elle réside toute entière dans la personne du roy—In France the nation is not a corporate body; it resides entirely in the person of the king.
Laws are the sovereigns of sovereigns.
Le ciel me prive d’une épouse qui ni m’a jamais donné d’autre chagrin que celui de sa mort—Heaven bereaves me of a spouse who never caused me any other vexation than by her death.Of his wife.
“L’état, c’est moi”—“The state, I am the state.”
Quelque parti que je prenne je sais bien que je serai blâmé—Whatever side I take, I know well that I shall be blamed.
Toutes les fois que je donne une place vacante, je fais cent mécontents, et un ingrat—Every time I appoint to a vacant post, I make a hundred discontented and one ungrateful.