"Colbert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Colbert was the indefatigable minister who aided the new monarch to restore the dignity of court life in France. He revealed vast hoards which the crafty Mazarin had concealed, and formed schemes of splendour that should be worthy ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... as you please!" cried Fritz excitedly, "but when Mr. Colbert's house was robbed he tracked the thief by a piece of buttered bread which he had dropped in his flight. A piece bitten out of it showed that the thief had lost a front tooth, and he had the man whom he suspected arrested. When ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... the famous (or infamous) Gourville, successively valet-de-chambre to the Duc de la Rochefoucault, hanged in effigy at Paris, king's envoy in Germany, and afterwards proposed to replace Colbert—it was thus precisely, I say, that Gourville secured favour, 'consideration,' fortune; for he declares, in his Memoirs, that his gains in a few years amounted to more than a million. And fortune seems to have ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... country, and the Archduchess Sophia who started lace schools in Bohemia. "Now at least I can have laces," said Anne of Austria, when Louis XIII., her husband died, and her court was famous for its cleanliness and its Spanish point. Colbert had three women as coadjutors when he started lace-making in France. It was because Josephine loved point d'Alencon that Napoleon revived it. Eugenie spent $5,000 for a single dress flounce, and ...
— The Art of Modern Lace Making • The Butterick Publishing Co.
... him try to surprise them, and he will find me very well inclined to have his cursed wife shut up; but if he got rid of this lover, she would have another to-morrow. Nay, she has others at this moment; for instance, the Chevalier de Colbert, and the Comte de l'Aigle." Madame de Pompadour, however, told me these two ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... to hold the reins of government. Louis went to see him in his final hours, and asked him for his last counsels. "Sire," replied the dying cardinal, "see that you respect yourself, and others will respect you; never have another first minister; employ Colbert in all things in which you need the services of an intelligent and devoted man." And the king followed this advice, and perhaps Mazarin gave it because he understood so well ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... one of the century of the Sun King. There he is with all his court, figured in lands, cities, lakes, and rivers. Louisiana bears his own name; Lake Pontchartrain the name of his minister for marine; Fort Duquesne, the name of his famous sailor. There were also the rivers Colbert and Seigneley, better known nowadays as Mississippi and Illinois. One of the Great Lakes had been named after the Duke of Orleans; another, the great Conde, the winner of Rocroy; another after his brother, Prince de Conti; but this last inland sea, as ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... Philip, the king's brother, to Princess Henrietta of England, likewise retires to his own estate, La Fere. Meanwhile, Mazarin has finally died, and left Louis to assume the reigns of power, with the assistance of M. Colbert, formerly Mazarin's trusted clerk. Colbert has an intense hatred for M. Fouquet, the king's superintendent of finances, and has resolved to use any means necessary to bring about his fall. With the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the late and present King,—which hung on each side of the throne,—might be seen the features of Richelieu, who first organized the rude settlements on the St. Lawrence into a body politic—a reflex of feudal France; and of Colbert, who made available its natural wealth and resources by peopling it with the best scions of the motherland, the noblesse and peasantry of Normandy, Brittany, and Aquitaine. There too might be seen ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... entirely mean and partly impious. So with Dumas. Chastity is not near his heart; nor yet, to his own sore cost, that virtue of frugality which is the armour of the artist. Now, in the "Vicomte," he had much to do with the contest of Fouquet and Colbert. Historic justice should be all upon the side of Colbert, of official honesty, and fiscal competence. And Dumas knew it well: three times at least he shows his knowledge; once it is but flashed upon us, and received with the laughter of Fouquet himself, in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and painstaking, can shoulder the entire burden of government. Louis XIV necessarily had to rely very much on his ministers, of whom Colbert was the most eminent. Colbert, until his death in 1683 A.D., gave France the best administration it had ever known. His reforming hand was especially felt in the finances. He made many improvements in the methods of tax-collection and turned the annual deficit in the revenues into ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... often a little over-full, but the many different woods which Dutch commerce made available seduced the marqueteurs into too pictorial a treatment in point of colour. Their reputation was so great that Colbert engaged two Dutch marqueteurs, Pierre Gole and Vordt, for the Gobelins at the beginning of the 17th century, and Jean Mace also learnt the craft by a long stay in Holland. Here, as well as in France and Italy, rich chairs ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... Belle-Isle, he symbolically gains the Loyalty of his servants, which he would keep during his long reign. When Porthos meets his demise at Belle-Isle, Strength is no longer a virtue prized in France, as Industry (in the form of Colbert) and Cunning (in Aramis) now become the hallmarks of the time. When Fouquet falls, so does Generosity. When Louis takes Louise as his mistress, condemning Raoul to his death, Fidelity dies with the poor ...
— Dumas Commentary • John Bursey
... tombeau eut elle ete fermee, qu'on vit le nombre des Convulsionnaires s'accroitre extraordinairement. Les convulsions commencerent a s'etendre jusqu'a, des personnes qui n'avaient ni maladie ni infirmite corporelle."—Oeuvres de Colbert, Tom. II. p. 203. (This is Colbert, Bishop of Montpelier, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... matters, reckoned not in francs, like the common, godless herd of post-Revolutionary Frenchmen, but in obsolete and forgotten ecus—ecus of all money units in the world!—as though Louis Quatorze were still promenading in royal splendour the gardens of Versailles, and Monsieur de Colbert busy with the direction of maritime affairs. You must admit that in a banker of the nineteenth century it was a quaint idiosyncrasy. Luckily, in the counting-house (it occupied part of the ground floor of the Delestang town residence, in a silent, shady street) the accounts were kept in modern ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... retaliate in this manner. The French have been particularly forward to favour their own manufactures, by restraining the importation of such foreign goods as could come into competition with them. In this consisted a great part of the policy of Mr Colbert, who, notwithstanding his great abilities, seems in this case to have been imposed upon by the sophistry of merchants and manufacturers, who are always demanding a monopoly against their countrymen. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... Emperor contented himself with forming his army into two columns; one of sixty-five thousand men, headed by the Emperor, after having joined to it the left wing, followed the steps of the English. The light artillery, the lancers of General Alphonse Colbert, and of the intrepid Colonel Sourd, kept dose after them to the entrance of the forest of Soignes, where the Duke of Wellington ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... trades were practically woman's. Embroidery of church vestments and hangings had been brought to the highest perfection. Lace-making had been known from the most ancient times; and Colbert, the famous financier and minister for Louis XIV., gave a privilege to Madame Gilbert, of Alencon, to introduce into France the manufacture of both Flemish and Venetian Point, and placed in her hands for the first expenses 150,000 ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... visited, under the title of "A Survey of the West Indies." This being the first and last book ever written by a resident of New Spain that had not been submitted to the most rigid censorship by the Inquisition, it produced so profound a sensation, that, by order of the great Colbert, French Minister of State, it was expurgated and translated into French by an Irish Catholic of the name of O'Neil. From this expurgated French edition the Spanish copy now before me was translated. From this Spanish edition I had made the several ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... French, had been conquered by the English in 1629, but speedily restored by Charles I; and towards the close of the seventeenth century France began to think of uniting Canada with another French colony, Louisiana, by a chain of posts along the Mississippi. Colbert, Louis XIV's minister, had greatly developed French commerce, navy, and navigation; and the Mississippi Company was an important factor in French history early in the eighteenth century. This design, if successful, would have neutralized the advantage England had secured in the ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... faire des copies de manuscrits pour les echanges. C'est aussi par les ordres de Colbert qu'on fit un etat des livres doubles susceptibles d'etre echanges contre d'autres qu'on ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... opportunities of practising his profession with worldly success. He speedily acquired a great name, and was appointed painter to the King, Louis XIV. Le Brun had enough influence with his royal master, and with the great minister Colbert, to succeed in establishing, while the painter was yet a young man, the Royal Academy of Art, of which he was the first member, and virtually the head, holding, in his own person, the directorship of the Gobelin tapestry works, which was to be the privilege of a member ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... who ever wrote history. The autobiographies and letters exhibit to us a transparent man, which indeed some of the personal allusions in the history might have foreshadowed. "I have often fluctuated and shall tamely follow the Colbert Ms.," he wrote, where the authenticity of a book was in question.[116] In another case "the scarcity of facts and the uncertainty of dates" opposed his attempt to describe the first invasion of Italy by Alaric.[117] In the beginning of ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... dead, but the Abbe Bernier was still alive. One day the Vendee was ungrateful to him. He wished to be appointed general agent to the royalist armies of the interior; Stofflet influenced the decision and got his old master, Comte Colbert de Maulevrier, appointed in Bernier's stead. When, at two o'clock in the morning, the council broke up, the Abbe Bernier had disappeared. What he did that night, God and he alone can tell; but at four o'clock in the morning a ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... Ladies of the Palace at the beginning of the Empire, Madame de Lucay, Madame de Remusat, Madame de Talhouet, Madame de Lauriston, were added thirteen other ladies: Madame Duchatel, Madame de Seran, Madame de Colbert, Madame Savary, Madame Octave de Segur, Madame de Turenne, Madame de Montalivet, Madame de Bouille, Madame de Vaux, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... advancement must be purchased by a change of his religion. To this he never could consent, being a man of sincere and enlightened piety, as well noted for his ability, courage, and conduct. On the recall of Colbert in 1674, he was minister plenipotentiary in England, and remained so for two or three years, when a more pliable tool was found in a M. Courtin. He still retained the good opinion of the French king and his advisers, for on the revocation ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... and these he gave To one who dwelt beside the Peel, That murmurs with its tiny wave To join the Tweed at Ashestiel. Now thick as motes the shadows wheel, And find their own, and claim a share Of books wherein Ribou did deal, Or Roulland sold to wise Colbert. {5} ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... buying and choosing of horses Did see the knaveries and tricks of jockeys Hath not a liberty of begging till he hath served three years He told me that he had so good spies Laissez nous affaire—Colbert Nonconformists do now preach openly in houses Offered to shew my wife further satisfaction if she desired Seeing that he cared so little if he was out Tell me that I speak in ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... the most serious negotiations—sent abroad to stay revolutions, summoned home to remodel constitutions, and consulted on every point as though he had spent his whole life in the study of Montesquieu or Colbert. Such was the moral life of the man pronounced the premier gentilhomme de France by the fathers and grandfathers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... inconsiderable republic; when the descendants of the conquerors of Cressy, Poitiers, and Azincour stood side by side with the successors of the vanquished in those disastrous fields, to achieve the conquest of Flanders and Holland. Without doubt, so far as human foresight could go, Louvois and Colbert were right. Nothing could appear so decidedly calculated to fix the power of Louis XIV. on an immovable foundation. But how vain are the calculations of the greatest human intellects, when put in opposition to the overruling will of Omnipotence! It was that very English alliance which ruined ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... mid-ocean, had met a storm, lost her mainmast, and by the time she reached the St. Lawrence had scarce a stick standing. She was still at Quebec, tied up in the bay of St. Charles, from which she would probably go out no more. Her captain—Jean Berigord —had chafed on the bit in the little Hotel Colbert, making himself more feared than liked, till one day he was taken ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... parallel to him among modern statesmen, he most resembles Colbert as the minister of Louis XIV.; or Prince Metternich, who in great simplicity ruled Continental Europe for a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... actually had existed in France, where articles of ordinary trade could not be transported from one province to another without payment of a heavy duty; but Colbert had abolished that system in France above one hundred years before the time of which ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... Mortier had succeeded in placing Krasnoe between him and Beningsen, he was in safety. The communication between that town and Liady was only interrupted by the fire of the enemy's batteries, which flanked the left side of the great road. Colbert and Latour-Maubourg kept them in check upon their heights. In the course of this march a most singular accident occurred. A howitzer shell entered the body of a horse, burst there, and blew him to pieces without wounding his rider, who fell upon ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... were sufficient to enable him to indulge his taste in this way. Here we find him admitted to the salon of Mme. de Lambert, held in her famous apartments, situated at the corner of the rue Richelieu and the rue Colbert, and now replaced by a portion of the Bibliotheque Nationale. It was a rendezvous of select society on Wednesdays, and particularly of the literary set on Tuesdays, and among its habitues may be mentioned such men as Fontenelle, d'Argenson, Sainte- ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... have been formidable at any time; but it was doubly formidable when directed by statesmen who in knowledge and ability were without rivals in Europe. No diplomatist could compare with Lionne, no war minister with Louvois, no financier with Colbert. Their young master, Lewis the Fourteenth, bigoted, narrow-minded, commonplace as he was, without personal honour or personal courage, without gratitude and without pity, insane in his pride, insatiable in his vanity, brutal ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... sufficiently master of himself to reply to the Emperor in a calm though rather faltering voice: "Sire, permit me to hope that posterity will judge of my grandfather more favourably than your Majesty does. During his administration he was ranked by the side of Sully and Colbert; and let me repeat again that I trust posterity will render him justice."—"Posterity will, probably, say little about him."— "I venture to ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... original, for Barreme. Francois Barreme was to France what Cocker was to England. He was born at Lyons in 1640, and died at Paris in 1703. He published several arithmetics, dedicating them to his patron, Colbert. One of the best known of his works is L'arithmetique, ou le livre facile pour apprendre l'arithmetique soi-meme, 1677. The French word bareme or barreme, a ready-reckoner, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... a young friend of mine—a member of Judge Knox's family. You have heard of the judge. And, David, this is Doctor Colbert. You, no doubt, have heard ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... The central battery ironclad Colbert is one of the ten ships of the French navy that constitute the group ranking next in importance to the squadron of great turret ships, of which the Formidable is the largest. The group consists of six types, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... Empires. Behind this group were magistrates, soldiers, and people, offering crowns, and at the ends of the transparency, the Seine and the Danube, surrounded with children, in token of fecundity. The twelve columns in front, the steps, the stone statues of Sully, of l'Hpital, of Colbert, of d'Aguesseau, as well as those of Themis and Minerva, were most brilliant. The bridge Louis XV., leading from the Place de la Concorde to the Temple of Hymen, resembled a triumphal avenue with its double row of lights, its colored ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... legere. Brack. The author served with distinction under Lassale, Colbert, Maison, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... with spoils, was drawing near his end, scruples of conscience, never felt before, led him to advise the King to keep a strict watch upon the Surintendant. He recommended for that purpose his steward, Colbert, of whose integrity and knowledge of business he had the highest opinion. Colbert was made Under-Secretary of State, and Fouquet's dismissal from office determined upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various |
