“The lessons from the peace process are clear; whatever life throws at us, our individual responses will be all the stronger for working together and sharing the load.”

This new power, which has proved itself to be such a terrifying weapon of destruction, is harnessed for the first time for the common good of our community.

Look, I know he has to appeal to the crazy right-wingers in his party, but the fact is, he’s not as forward-thinking as an eighty-seven-year-old lady who wears a crown on her head. It’s pathetic.

My husband has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim.

[To the suggestion that Great Britain might someday want a Republic:] We’ll go quietly.

Good memories are our second chance at happiness.

Therefore I am sure that this, my Coronation, is not the symbol of a power and a splendour that are gone but a declaration of our hopes for the future, and for the years I may, by God’s Grace and Mercy, be given to reign and serve you as your Queen.

The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women

I myself prefer my New Zealand eggs for breakfast.

I can give my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.

There are long periods when life seems a small, dull round, a petty business with no point, and then suddenly we are caught up in some great event which gives us a glimpse of the solid and durable foundations of our existence.

At Christmas, I am always struck by how the spirit of togetherness lies also at the heart of the Christmas story. A young mother and a dutiful father with their baby were joined by poor shepherds and visitors from afar. They came with their gifts to worship the Christ child.

In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace we have built in Europe since 1945.

Madam President, speaking here in Dublin Castle it is impossible to ignore the weight of history, as it was yesterday when you and I laid wreaths at the Garden of Remembrance.

I believe that there is a great fear in our generation of being labeled as priggish.

[On being criticized for her serious expression:] I simply ache from smiling. Why are women expected to beam all the time? It’s unfair. If a man looks solemn, it’s automatically assumed he’s a serious person, not a miserable one.

I hope people will think very carefully about the future.

Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.

Leaving the European Union really does give us a chance as a country to become more outward-looking, to become more competitive, and to deepen our links with our partners right across the world.

Old people have fewer diseases than the young, but their diseases never leave them.

War is too serious a matter to leave to soldiers.

Labour want to control all parts of the economy and society so that they can pursue the politics of envy. It would leave us all paying higher taxes and the economy in tatters.

Naked a man comes into the world and naked he leaves it, after all is said and done he leaves nothing except the good deeds he leaves behind.

Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.

Whenever nature leaves a hole in a person’s mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit.