"Colbert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of his wife, who was daughter of the late king, found excellent reasons (for his own satisfaction) to invade a material portion of that declining monarchy. Well prepared by the financial and military foresight of Colbert for his great design, he suddenly poured a powerful army, under Turenne, into Brabant and Flanders; quickly overran and took possession of these provinces; and, in the space of three weeks, added Franche-Comte to his conquests. Europe ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... Perrault, brother of Claude Perrault the architect and ex-physician, was himself Controller of Public Buildings under Colbert, and after his retirement from that office, published in 1690 his Parallel between the Ancients and Moderns, taking the side of the moderns in the controversy, and dealing sometimes disrespectfully with Homer. Boileau replied to him ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... of his order, which was swept away as so much anachronistic rubbish—did not come until a hundred years later. In his own day France was great, and this not because but in spite of him. After all, he was not the absolute ruler he conceived himself. There were such capable men as Colbert and Louvois at the King's side'; there was the great genius of France which manifests itself when and as it will, whatever the regime—and there was Madame de Montespan to whose influence not a little of Louis's ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... over, would be compelled to select a point inaccessible to these gunboats. He actually did choose such a place, at the old railroad-piers, four miles above Florence, Alabama, which is below Muscle Shoals and above Colbert Shoals. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... When Louis XIV. asked Colbert how it was that, ruling so great and populous a country as France, he had been unable to conquer so small a country as Holland, the minister replied: "Because, Sire, the greatness of a country does not depend ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... Orleans and everything else to which she had any claim. The fleurs-de-lis floated still over only two tiny fishing islands off the Newfoundland shore. All the glowing plans of France's leaders—of Richelieu, of Louis XIV, of Colbert, of Frontenac, of the heroic missionaries of the Jesuit Order—seemed to have come ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... not hopeless, that he and his friends meant to continue the resistance, that the meeting-places of the Societies had not yet been settled, but that they would be during the evening, that my presence was desired, and that if I would be under the Colbert Arcade at nine o'clock, either himself or another of their men would be there, and would serve me as guide. We decided that in order to make himself known, the messenger, when accosting me, should give the password, "What is ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... 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 a surplus. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER |
