William the Silent Quotes

It is not possible for me to bear alone such labours and the burden of such weighty cares as press on me from hour to hour, without one man at my side to help me. I have not a soul to aid me in all my anxieties and toils.

I have heard that tomorrow they are to execute the two prisoners, the accomplices of him who shot me. For my part, I most willingly pardon them. If they are thought deserving of a signal and severe penalty, I beg the magistrates not to put them to torture, but to give them a speedy death, if they have merited this. Good-night!

I have come to make my grave in this land.

Sire, have pity on the Spanish infantry, which, for lack of pay and out of sheer starvation, is scouring the low country round, plundering the peasantry in mere need of food. These disorders I cannot repress, much less can I punish them, for necessity has no law.

Tell the King, that whole cities are in open revolt against the prosecutions, and that it is impossible to enforce the decrees here. As for myself, I shall continue to hold by the Catholic faith; but I will never give any colour to the tyrannical claim of kings to dictate to the consciences of their people, and to prescribe the form of religion that they choose to impose. Call the King’s attention to the corruption that has crept into the administration of justice. Let the Government be reformed, the Privy Council and the Council of Finance, and increase the authority of the Council of State.

This mercy will be your ruin; you will be at the bridge across which the Spaniards will enter this land.

My legal wife is to me dead; the only ecclesiastical authority I recognise pronounces me free; the attacks and threats of men do not disturb me. I am acting according to a clear conscience, and am doing hurt to no man. For my conduct, I will answer to my maker.

They stormed Oudewater, and delivered it over to all imaginable cruelties, sparing neither sex nor age.

In all things there must be order, but it must of such a kind as is possible to observe … to see a man burnt for doing as he thought right, harms the people, for this is a matter of conscience.

It would be the greatest disaster which could befall our House if any untoward accident befall you, which may God avert! Do not hesitate to open letters addressed to me. Your love for me and the absolute confidence between us make me feel that I cannot have any secrets from you.

’”Farewell count without a head”’

My God, my God, have mercy on me, and on my poor people!

We may see how miraculously God defends our people, and makes us hope that, in spite of the malice of our enemies, He will bring our cause to a good and happy end, to the advancement of His glory and the deliverance of so many Christians from unjust oppression.

You are staking your own head by trusting the King. Never will I so stake mine, for he has deceived me too often. His favourite maxim is, haereticis non est servanda fides. I am now bald and Calvinist and in that faith will I die.

I am no Calvinist, but it seems to me neither right nor worthy of a Christian to seek, for the sake of differences between the doctrine of Calvin and the Confession of Augsburg, to have this land swarming with troops and inundated with blood.