“If I follow the inclination of my nature, it is this: beggar-woman and single, far rather than queen and married.”

“I would not have my sheep branded with any other mark than my own, or follow the whistle of a strange shepherd.”

“As for my own part I care not for death, for all men are mortal; and though I be a woman yet I have as good a courage answerable to my place as ever my father had. I am your anointed Queen. I will never be by violence constrained to do anything. I thank God I am indeed endowed with such qualities that if I were turned out of the realm in my petticoat I were able to live in any place in Christendom.”

“My care is like my shadow in the sun, Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it, Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.”

“[I]n the end this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a Queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin.”

“I grieve and dare not show my discontent, I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,I do, yet dare not say I ever meant, I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate. I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned, Since from myself another self I turned. My care is like my shadow in the sun, Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it, Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.”

“There is no marvel in a woman learning to speak, but there would be in teaching her to hold her tongue”