The British Monarchy - Official site covers the monarch's role and the history of the monarchy; gives biographies of the Royal Family, tourist information for Royal Palaces and the Royal Collection
Privy Council Office - Advises on the exercise of prerogative powers and certain functions assigned to the Queen including.affairs of charities and companies who are incorporated by Royal Charter. Also in respect of certain statutory regulatory bodies covering a number of professions and in the world of higher education.
The Royal Marriage Act, 1772 - Act requiring the consent of the Sovereign before a member of the Royal Family can marry.
1917 Proclamation - Issued by King George V declaring that the Royal Family would be known as the House of WIndsor.
Bill of Rights, 1689 - An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown. Re-established the monarchy as a result of the Glorious Revolution following Cromwell's Commonwealth.
College of Arms - Official repository of the coats of arms and pedigrees of English, Welsh, Northern Irish and Commonwealth families and their descendants.
The Act of Supremacy - Passed in 1534, this is the piece of legislation which declares that the sovereign is Supreme Head of the Church of England.
The Crown Estate - Property owned by the Sovereign of the United Kingdom "in right of the Crown" - with origins dating back almost 1000 years. Official site provides detailed information on the estates and their history.
Privy Council: Let's abolish this absurdity - Roy Hattersley, a member of the privy council explains its function and calls for the ending of the odd circle which surrounds the monarch in this article for the Guardian newspaper.
Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
-- M. C. Reed The good people sleep much better at night than the bad people. Of course, the bad people enjoy
the waking hours much more.
-- Woody Allen You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience.
-- Stanislaw J. Lec "People drag their progeny around with them like a ball and chain, like some terrible deadweight that hinders their every move - and that, as often as not, effectively winds up killing them." (Michel Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
-- Samuel Johnson Crown "I feel I have to protect myself against things. So I'm pretty careful to lose most of them." (George Orson Welles) Property may be destroyed and money may lose its purchasing power; but, character, health,
knowledge and good judgement will always be in demand under all conditions.
-- Roger Babson >From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some
day I intend reading it.
-- Groucho Marx Crown
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because
generally they are the same people.
-- G. K. Chesterton It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
-- Mark Twain A man must marry only a very pretty woman in case he should ever want some other man to take
her off his hands.
-- Sacha Guitry Few things are harder to put up with than a good example.
- Mark Twain Honor's a thing too subtle for wisdom; if honor lie in eating, he's right honorable.
-- Beaumont, Francis Crown "When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools." (William Shakespeare) It depends on your definition of asleep. They were not stretched out. They had their eyes closed.
They were seated at their desks with their heads in a nodding position.
-- John Hogan, Commonwealth The gods too are fond of a joke.
- Aristotle Crown
Never judge someone by who he's in love with; judge him by his friends. People fall in love with
the most appalling people. Take a cool, appraising glance at his pals.
-- Cynthia Heimel Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more
experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat
soiled or torn? Nothing says loving like marrying your cousin! -- Al Bundy If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing.
-- Kingsley Amis Of the seven dwarves, only Dopey had a shaven face. This should tell us something about the
custom of shaving.
-- Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All Crown "Your children are not your children. They are sons and daughters of life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you, they belong not to you. You may gi We do not remember days; we remember moments.
-- Anonymous The church must be the critic and guide of the state, and never its tool.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. Crown
"If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive." (Samuel Goldwyn) "That's the true sign. If the lover has not yet achieved his prize, his eyes will follow the woman, while she appears indifferent. But once he's gained his goal, it's the woman's eyes that follow him, The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it.
-- Lou Holtz Although the course may change sometimes, rivers always reach the sea.
-- Led Zeppelin, Ten Years Gone A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
-- Buke Ellington Crown Marriage is bliss. Ignorance is bliss. Ergo... All human actions are equivalent... and... all are on principle doomed...
-- Jean-Paul Sartre, "Being and Nothingness" "... and then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." (Anais Nin) Crown
"Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts." (Henry B. Adams) A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
-Robert Frost (1874-1963) Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for the appointment by the corrupt few.
-- George Bernard Shaw A really busy person never knows how much he weighs.
-- Ed Howe I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with
typewriters.
- Frank Lloyd Wright Crown I worship the quicksand he walks in.
- Art Buchwald I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
-- William Butler Yeats, from "He wishes for the cloths of heaven" Dear Mrs, Mr, Miss, or Mr and Mrs Daneeka: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father or brother was killed, wounded, or reported missing in action. -- C Crown
The most wasted day of all is that in which we have not laughed.
-- Sebastian Roch Nicolas Chamfort He who laughs last thinks slowest.
-- Seen on a bumper sticker "The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing." (John Powell) "And on the seventh day, God stepped back and said 'There is my creation, perfect in every way ... oh, damn it, I left pot all over the place. Now they'll think I want them to smoke it. Now I have to I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.
-- Bill Hoest Crown "Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures--in this century as in others our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together." I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
-- Thomas Edison "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." (Douglas Adams) Crown
Here's a toast to your new bride who has everything a girl could want in her life, except for good
taste in men!
-- Wedding Toast Mary had a little lamb and the doctor fainted.
-- Anonymous Education is an admirable thing, but nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
-- Oscar Wilde Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside
desperate to get out.
-- Michel de Montaigne "A man who tells lies, like me, merely hides the truth. But a man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it." (Claude Rains, as Mr. Dryden, Lawrence of Arabia, 1962) Crown "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." (Thomas Jefferson) "When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory." (Friedrich Wilhelm Ni Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
- Auric Goldfinger, in Goldfinger by Ian L. Fleming Crown
"Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it." (John Quincy Adams) Virtue is like health: the harmony of the whole man.
-- Thomas Carlyle Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up
our minds to walk boldly through them.
-- Orison Swett Marden We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.
-- Decca Recording Company, rejecting the Beatles, 1962 "In my opinion, the greatest single failure of American education is that students come away unable to distinguish between a symbol and the thing the symbol stands for." (Paul Lutus) Crown May you be blessed with a wife so healthy and strong, she can pull the plow when your horse drops dead. "Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck." (George Sanders, suicide note) Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald Crown
It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is
the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be
cr The sun never sets on the British empire because Britain is in the east and the sun sets in the
west.
-- Unknown history student Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
-- Samuel Johnson Look at life through the windshield, not the rear-view mirror.
-- Byrd Baggett Radio news is bearable. This is due to the fact that while the news is being broadcast the disc
jockey is not allowed to talk.
-- Fran Lebowitz Crown Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and
begin slitting throats.
- Henry Louis Mencken "To live is to dream and to die is to awaken." (Anonymous) There's nothing wrong with having nothing to say -- unless you insist on saying it.
-- Anonymous Crown
Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you
have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.
-- Aldous Huxley "Whether it is a black cat or a white cat, as long as it can catch the rat, it is a good cat." (Deng Xiao Ping) My wife doesn't care what I do away from home, as long as I don't enjoy it. I've been asked to say a couple of words about my husband, Fang. How about "short" and
"cheap"?
-- Phyllis Diller blah "It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous." (Benjamin Fran Crown "The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize." (Robert Hughes) Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
-- George Clemenceau Love is blind and marriage is the institution for the blind.
-- James Graham Crown
Go away...I'm alright.
-- H. G. Wells, dying words Marriage is a great institution, but who wants to live in an institution?
-- Marx Groucho, the film "Animal Crackers" He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own.
-- Aesop A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway.
-- Fr. Jerome Cummings I am become death, shatterer of worlds.
-- Robert J. Oppenheimer, citing from the Bhagavadgita, after witnessing the world's first nuclear
explosion Crown "When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost." (Billy Graham) Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that he sometimes has to eat them.
-- Adlai Stevenson Inanimate objects are classified scientifically into three categories-- those that don't work, those
that break down, and those that get lost.
-- Russell Baker Crown
