Massie Quotes & Sayings

I agree with Sen. Rand Paul on issues more than I do Mitch McConnell. — Thomas Massie

The German leaders, said Winston Churchill, turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland into Russia. — Robert K. Massie

To modernize their sleeping habits, [Peter the Great] declared, 'Ladies and gentlemen of the court caught sleeping with their boots on will be instantly decapitated. — Bob Massie

I do not know whether as a child I was really ugly, but I remember well that I was often told that I was and that I must therefore strive to show inward virtues and intelligence. Up to the age of fourteen or fifteen, I was firmly convinced of my ugliness and was therefore more concerned with acquiring inward accomplishments and was less mindful of my outward appearance. — Robert K. Massie

In business, sometimes you have to change the CEO in order to change the direction of the company. — Thomas Massie

Pain heightens every sense. More powerfully than any drug, it intensifies colors, sounds, sight, feelings. Pain is like a glass wall. It is impossible to climb it, but you must, and, somehow, you do. Then there is an explosion of brilliance and the world is more apparent in its complexity and beauty. — Suzanne Massie

It is one of the supreme ironies of history that the blessed birth of an only son should have proved the mortal blow. Even as the saluting cannons boomed and the flags waved, Fate had prepared a terrible story. Along with the lost battles and sunken ships, the bombs, the revolutionaries and their plots, the strikes and revolts, Imperial Russia was toppled by a tiny defect in the body of a little boy. — Robert K. Massie

My friend," he said, "there is no worse traitor than a small lapdog. The first thing I always do when I am in love with a woman is to give her one of these little dogs. This way, I can always discover whether there is someone more favored than myself. The test is infallible. As you saw just now, the dog wanted to bite me because I am a stranger, but when it saw you, it went mad with joy." Two days after this visit, Poniatowski left Russia. — Robert K. Massie

Lord Salisbury's basic educational philosophy was that higher authority could, at best, have only a marginal effect; real desire to learn had to come from within. "N. has been very hard put to it for something to do," he wrote of a son who had been left alone with him for a few days at Hatfield. "Having tried all the weapons in the gun-cupboard in succession - some in the riding room and some, he tells me, in his own room - and having failed to blow his fingers off, he has been driven to reading Sydney Smith's Essays and studying Hogarth's pictures." Lady Salisbury did not share her husband's detached approach. "He may be able to govern the country," she said, "but he is quite unfit to be left in charge of his children. — Robert K. Massie

Massie's frindship is something that has to be earned. Not because she's beautiful or popular but because she's loyal. — Lisi Harrison

All the devil asks is acquiescence; not conflict, not struggle. Acquiescence. — Suzanne Massie

I used to say to myself that happiness and misery depend on ourselves. If you feel unhappy, rise above it and act so that your happiness may be independent of all outside events. — Robert K. Massie

But "Bloody Sunday" was only the beginning of a year of terror. Three weeks later, in February, Grand Duke Serge, the Tsar's uncle and Ella's husband, was assassinated in Moscow. The Grand Duke, who took a harsh pride in knowing how bitterly he was hated by revolutionaries, had just said goodbye to his wife in their Kremlin apartment and was driving through one of the gates when a bomb exploded on top of him. Hearing the shuddering blast, Ella cried, "It's Serge," and rushed to him. What she found was not her husband, but a hundred unrecognizable pieces of flesh, bleeding into the snow. — Robert K. Massie

When the moment of departure arrived, Catherine and Peter accompanied Johanna on the short first stage of her journey, from Tsarskoe Selo to nearby Krasnoe Selo. The next morning, Johanna left before dawn without saying goodbye; Catherine assumed that it was "not to make me any sadder." Waking up and finding her mother's room empty, she was distraught. Her mother had vanished - from Russia and from her life. Since Catherine's birth, Johanna had always been present, to guide, prompt, correct, and scold. She might have failed as a diplomatic agent; she certainly had not become a brilliant figure on the European stage; but she had not been unsuccessful as a mother. Her daughter, born a minor German princess, was now an imperial grand duchess on a path to becoming an empress. — Robert K. Massie

The Pretty Committee:
the only thing harder than
getting in, is staying in. — Lisi Harrison

For to tempt and to be tempted are things very nearly allied. — Robert K. Massie

With tears in her eyes, Alexandra assured him that the husband and father was infinitely more precious to her than the tsar whose throne she had shared. Nicholas finally broke. Laying his head on his wife's breast, he sobbed like a child. — Robert K. Massie

At one dinner, Peter was telling the company that in Vienna he had been getting fat, but on his return the nature of the fare in Poland had made him quite slender again. The Polish ambassador, a man of great girth, disputed this, saying that he had been brought up in Poland and owed amplitude to the Polish diet. Peter shot back, "It was not in Poland, but here in Moscow that you crammed yourself" - the Pole, like all ambassadors, was provided with his food and expenses by the host government. The Pole, wisely, let the matter drop. — Robert K. Massie

When one's own problems are unsolvable and all best efforts frustrated, it is lifesaving to listen to other people's problems. — Suzanne Massie

In January in Northern Russia, everything vanishes beneath a deep blanket of whiteness. Rivers, fields, trees, roads, and houses disappear, and the landscape becomes a white sea of mounds and hollows. On days when the sky is gray, it is hard to see where earth merges with air. On brilliant days when the sky is a rich blue, the sunlight is blinding, as if millions of diamonds were scattered on the snow, refracting light. In Catherine's time, the log roads of summer were covered with a smooth coating of snow and ice that enabled the sledges to glide smoothly at startling speeds; on some days, her procession covered a hundred miles. — Robert K. Massie

It is one of the many merits of this admirable biography of Proust's mother that it invites one to return to the novel with perhaps a fuller understanding of Proust's heredity, hinterland, and upbringing ... This fascinating book is full of interesting social and cultural observation, of information about French Jewish life, the position of Jews in society and, of course, the Dreyfus case. But it is essentially a study of one of the most remarkable and fruitful of mother-son relationships. As such it is a book that every Proustian will want to read. — Allan Massie

Some people think the big city's a scary place? That's nothing to compare to the backwoods. — Elizabeth Massie

All that the Devil asks is acquiescence ... — Suzanne Massie

When the horse was little, Massie had covered the walls with posters of young fillies that she thought Brownie would find sexy. — Lisi Harrison

France, like every other Western country except the United States, has long accepted the principle that comprehensive health care is the right of every citizen. No Frenchman need ever fear that catastrophic illness will wipe him out financially. How long, do you suppose, will it take us, in the United States, to catch up? — Suzanne Massie

a soldier in life, not a soldier with a gun, but a soldier for life. — Henry N. Massie

Later, concealment of pride in humility came to be recognized as a deliberate and useful tactic which Sophia - renamed Catherine - used when confronting crisis and danger. Threatened, she drew around herself a cloak of meekness, deference, and temporary submission. — Robert K. Massie

She sent me a bottle with a liquid composed of lemon juice, egg white and French brandy. In a few days my sunburn disappeared and since then I have always used this mixture. One — Robert K. Massie

Gregory Rasputin, his bloodstream filled with poison, his body punctured by bullets, had died by drowning. — Robert K. Massie

When pain has been constant, it has its own momentum and laws. The vital thing is to break its ascendancy over the mind. — Suzanne Massie

At dinner one night at Osborne House, the Queen entertained a famous admiral whose hearing was impaired. Politely, Victoria had asked about his fleet and its activities; then, shifting the subject, she asked about the admiral's sister, an elderly dowager of awesome dignity. The admiral thought she was inquiring about his flagship, which was in need of overhaul. "Well, ma'am," he said, "as soon as I get back I'm going to have her hauled out, roll her on her side and have the barnacles scraped off her bottom." Victoria stared at him for a second and then, for minutes afterward, the dining room shook with her unstoppable peals of laughter. — Robert K. Massie

One question:do you want to hang ten or BE a ten?-Massie Block — Lisi Harrison

Now we are even. — Lisi Harrison

Are you a female dog?"
"What?" Massie asked. "Why?"
"Because you are acting like a real bitch! — Lisi Harrison

One frequent visitor, an opera singer, often rang up Rasputin simply to sing to him his favorite songs over the telephone. Taking the telephone, Rasputin danced around the room, holding the earpiece to his ear. At the table, Rasputin stroked the arms and hair of the women sitting next to him. — Robert K. Massie

One of the things that really bothers me is that Americans don't have any sense of history. The majority of Americans don't have any idea of where we've come from, so they naturally succumb to the kind of cliche version that Ronald Reagan represented. — Robert K. Massie

My house is solar powered. I tell Republicans, 'You can hate the subsidies - I hate the subsidies, too - but you can't hate solar panels.' — Thomas Massie

Sometimes on the bridge of his flagship, Beatty would release his inner tension by making faces. "For no apparent reason," said an officer who served with him, "he would screw his face into a fearsome grimace and hold it quite unconsciously for a minute or two." Another peculiarity was his addiction to fortune-tellers: a Mrs. Robinson, a Madame Dubois, and, in Edinburgh when he commanded the Grand Fleet, a "Josephine. — Robert K. Massie

I can focus on what seems to be the most boring things for days at a time. — Thomas Massie

Evil is near. Sometimes late at night the air grows strongly clammy and cold around me. I feel it brushing me. All that the Devil asks is acquiescence not struggle, not conflict. Acquiescence. — Suzanne Massie

Blunders are an inescapable feature of war, because choice in military affairs lies generally between the bad and the worse. — Allan Massie

This marriage had resulted from impulse: he had seen her on a high-flying swing at Tsarkoe Selo and her skirt, flared by the breeze, had exposed her ankles; he had proposed the following day. — Robert K. Massie

Russians understand the rhythm of despair. — Suzanne Massie

. . . people are only loaned to those who love them; they cannot be held, but can disappear in a moment without reason, without justice, without hope. — Suzanne Massie

Do you know what a soldier is, young man? He's the chap who makes it possible for civilised folk to despise war. — Allan Massie

Are you a wedgie?" Asked Massie. "No." "Then why are you all up in my butt?" Said Massie — Lisi Harrison

There would be no Lenin without Rasputin. — Robert K. Massie

She (historian Barbara Tuchman) draws on skepticism, not cynicism, leaving the reader not so much outraged by human ability as amused and saddened by human folly. — Robert K. Massie

William tapped Nicholas on the shoulder and said, My advice to you is more speeches and more parades. — Robert K. Massie

Alicia, do I sell fertilizer?" Massie asked.
"No, why?" Alicia fell for Massie's setup.
"Then why do you think I give a crap? — Lisi Harrison

As I presided over Massie's execution, I thought about the abuse and neglect he endured as a child in the foster care system. We failed to keep him safe, and our failure contributed to who he was as an adult. Instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars to kill him, what if we spent that money on other foster children so that we stop producing men like Massie in the first place? — Jeanne Woodford

Asking himself how this had happened and what could be done about it, Peter came to understand that the roots of Western technological achievement lay in the freeing of men's minds. He grasped that it had been the Renaissance and the Reformation, neither of which had ever come to Russia, which had broken the bonds of the medieval church and created an environment where independent philosophical and scientific inquiry as well as wide-ranging commercial enterprise could flourish. He knew that these bonds of religious orthodoxy still existed in Russia, reinforced by peasant folkways and traditions which had endured for centuries. Grimly, Peter resolved to break these bonds on his return. — Robert K. Massie

Alone knows what times we are living in when undisguised selfishness stifles all feelings of conscience, duty, or even ordinary decency. — Robert K. Massie

Books were her refuge. Having set herself to learn the Russian language, she read every Russian book she could find. But French was the language she preferred, and she read French books indiscriminately, picking up whatever her ladies-in-waiting happened to be reading. She always kept a book in her room and carried another in her pocket. — Robert K. Massie

A child can do nothing in his weakness. A man can do much.' — Robert K. Massie

Claire, did I invite you to my barbeque?" Massie asked, her neck tilting to the right and her arms tightly crossed.
"Huh? No. I mean, I don't know," Claire said.
"Then why are you all up in my grill?" Massie said through her teeth. — Lisi Harrison

Today the crime novelist has one advantage denied to writers of 'straight' or 'literary' novels. Unlike them he can range over all levels of society, for crime can easily breach the barriers that exist in our stratified society. Because of these barriers the modern literary novel, unlike its 19th-century predecessors, is often confined to the horizontal, dealing only with one class. But crime runs through society from top to bottom, and so the crime novelist can present a fuller picture of the way we live now. — Allan Massie

But, curiously, Peter did not grasp - perhaps he did not wish to grasp - the political implications of this new view of man. He had not gone to the West to study "the art of government." Although in Protestant Europe he was surrounded by evidence of the new civil and political rights of individual men embodied in constitutions, bills of rights and parliaments, he did not return to Russia determined to share power with his people. On the contrary, he returned not only determined to change his country but also convinced that if Russia was to be transformed, it was he who must provide both the direction and the motive force. He would try to lead; but where education and persuasion were not enough, he would drive - and if necessary flog - the backward nation forward. — Robert K. Massie

Four of my children are daughters, and I've watched them devote themselves to reading books about how little girls learn to become women - how they learn to deal with boys and men, and the different hurdles females have to go over. — Robert K. Massie

Am I a vampire?" Massie asked.
"Huh?" Alicia asked.
"Then why are you keeping me in the dark? — Lisi Harrison

There are all these things I want to do when I don't have to finish a book. But I have to keep writing because I keep having children. — Robert K. Massie

We are responsible for actions performed in response to circumstances for which we are not responsible. — Allan Massie

In the summer of 1705, an unusually extravagant rumor horrified the citizenry. The Tsar, it was said, had forbidden Russian men to marry for seven years so that Russian women might be married to foreigners being imported by the shipload. To preserve their young women, Astrachaners arranged a mass marriage before the foreigners could arrive, and on a single day, July 30, 1705, a hundred women were married. — Robert K. Massie

I'd say I'm a true conservative. Liberals have got a monopoly on protecting the environment, or all the cool technology, and I don't think we should cede that territory. — Thomas Massie

This effort notwithstanding, however, certain British institutions were not be trifled with: "Sent hands to tea at 3:30 with Indefatigable to go to tea after us," Kennedy recorded in his action report. By 3:45 p.m., Goeben and Breslau were pulling away into a misty haze; at 4:00, Goeben was only just in sight against the horizon. Dublin held on, but at 7:37 p.m. the light cruiser signaled, "Goeben out of sight now, can only see smoke; still daylight." By nine o'clock, the smoke had disappeared, daylight was gone, and Goeben and Breslau had vanished. At 9:52 p.m., on Milne's instructions, Dublin gave up the chase. At 1:15 a.m., a signal from Malta informed the Mediterranean Fleet that war had begun. — Robert K. Massie

Her heart pounding like a teenaged boy on a hooker ... — Elizabeth Massie

The cat does not negotiate with the mouse. — Robert K. Massie

When I was eleven, my mother gave me Robert K. Massie's 'Nicholas and Alexandra.' It was the first 'grownup' book I read, and I loved it. — Kathryn Harrison

I'd rather be a friendless loser than have a bunch of friends who secretly hated me. (spoken by Massie Block) — Lisi Harrison

(aspiring journalist to Carl Kolchak)
'Andy knows I want to be a reporter. Like you'
This took me by surprise. 'Sallie, my dear, nobody wants to be a reporter like me. — Elizabeth Massie

In Russia everything is a secret, but there is no secrecy. — Robert K. Massie

As a young man, the seer became a rake. He drank and fought and made free with the village girls. He became a wagoner, carrying goods and passengers to other villages, an occupation that extended the range of his conquests. A good talker, sure of himself, he tried every girl he met. His method was direct: he grabbed and started undoing buttons. Naturally, he was frequently kicked and scratched and bitten, but the sheer volume of his efforts brought him notable success. He learned that even in the shyest and primmest of girls, the emptiness and loneliness of life in a Siberian village had bred a flickering appetite for romance and adventure. Gregory's talent was for stimulating those appetites and overcoming all hesitations by direct, good-natured aggression. — Robert K. Massie

He was said to ride hallooing through the night, to be ready to shoot, hunt, or swim anywhere in any weather, to be able to drink half a dozen young lieutenants from nearby garrisons under the table, to wake up his occasional guests by firing a pistol through their bedroom windows, to have seduced every peasant girl in all the villages, to have released a fox in a lady's drawing room. — Robert K. Massie

Life is not mathematics, and few things have only one correct answer — Allan Massie

She had dealt with her pregnancy by wrapping herself in dreams. — Robert K. Massie

I would say about myself that I was a true gentleman with a mind more male than female, but, together with this, I was anything but masculine and, combined with the mind and character of a man, I possessed the attractions of a loveable woman. May I be pardoned for offering this candid expression of my feelings instead of trying to cover them a veil of false modesty. This — Robert K. Massie

Declared that he had been directed to make a pilgrimage. His father scoffed - "Gregory has turned pilgrim out of laziness," said Efim - but Gregory set out and walked two thousand miles to the monastery at Mount Athos in Greece. At the end of two years, when Gregory returned, he carried an aura of mystery and holiness. He began to pray at length, to bless other peasants, to kneel at their beds in supplication when they were sick. He gave up his drinking and curbed his public lunges at women. It began to be said that Gregory Rasputin, the profligate, was a man who was close to God. The village priest, alarmed at this sudden blossoming of a vigorous young Holy Man within his sphere, suggested heresy and threatened an investigation. Unwilling to argue and bored by life in Pokrovskoe, Rasputin left the village and began once again to wander. — Robert K. Massie

Peter, who broke his enemies on the rack and hanged them in Red Square, who had his son tortured to death, is Peter the Great. But Nicholas, whose hand was lighter than that of any tsar before him, is "Bloody Nicholas". In human terms, this is irony rich and dramatic, the more so because Nicholas knew what he was called. — Robert K. Massie

It's never too late to fix things with people you love, Massie. Kendra said.
That's true. William agreed. — Lisi Harrison

To be a friend takes time, and time is what nobody has. Therefore, real friends are rare. — Suzanne Massie

Mind was impure and his moral behavior was gross. But he had in lavish abundance some of the dramatic trappings of holiness. Along with his burning eyes, he had a fluent tongue. His head was filled with Scriptures, and his deep, powerful voice made him a compelling preacher. Besides, he had wandered the length and breadth of Russia and twice made pilgrimages to the Holy Land. He presented himself as a humble penitent, a man who had sinned greatly, been forgiven and commanded to do God's work. It was a touching symbol of his humility, people said, that he kept the nickname "Rasputin" which he had earned as a young man in his native village. "Rasputin" in Russian means "dissolute. — Robert K. Massie

The love of power and the power to attract love were not easy to reconcile. — Robert K. Massie

I went through all my electric bills, the water bills, the phone bills, elevator contracts, and I found enough wasteful spending without reducing any programs anywhere, without reducing any services, I found enough wasteful spending to pay my entire salary for three years. — Thomas Massie

I have listened with the greatest pleasure to all the inspirations of your brilliant mind. But all your grand principles, which I understand very well, would do splendidly in books and very badly in practice. In your plans for reform, you are forgetting the difference between our two positions: you work only on paper which accepts anything, is smooth and flexible and offers no obstacles either to your imagination or your pen, while I, poor empress, work on human skin, which is far more sensitive and touchy. — Robert K. Massie

They say it is a wide road that leads to war and only a narrow path that leads home again. — Bob Massie

To prove to [her friend, Swedish diplomat Count] Gyllenborg that she was not superficial, Catherine composed an essay about herself, "so that he would see whether I knew myself or not." The next day, she wrote and handed to Gyllenborg an essay titled 'Portrait of a Fifteen-Year-Old Philosopher.' He was impressed and returned it with a dozen pages of comments, mostly favorable. "I read his remarks again and again, many times [Catherine later recalled in her memoirs]. I impressed them on my consciousness and resolved to follow his advice. In addition, there was something else surprising: one day, while conversing with me, he allowed the following sentence to slip out: 'What a pity that you will marry! I wanted to find out what he meant, but he would not tell me. — Robert K. Massie

That Figure so impressd it self upon my Mind that I have been in a manner walking towards it all my Life. Then I peered into Wendel Dietterlin his Architectura, and there were unveiled to me the several Orders: of the Tuscan, which is now mine own, I was then mov'd by its Strangeness and Awefulness; the obscured Shapes, the Shaddowes and the massie Openings so in-chanted my Spirit that when looking on them I imagined my self to be lock'd in some dark and Enclosed space. The heavinesse of Stone did so oppress me that I was close to Extinction, and I fancied that I could see in the Engraver's lines the sides of Demons, crumbled Walls, and half-humane Creatures rising from the Dust. There was some thing that waited for me there, already in Ruines. — Peter Ackroyd

Sorry, No conprendo I don't speak Loser. — Lisi Harrison

On August 2, Germany and Turkey had signed a defensive alliance against Russia. The Turks were reluctant, however, to take the actual step into war and the German embassy in Constantinople was recommending application of pressure on the grand vizier and his Cabinet. The sight of Goeben anchored off the Golden Horn was thought likely to offer formidable persuasion. — Robert K. Massie

We human beings often see only what is before our eyes. But God in His infinite justice searches the heart and our secret motives and manifests accordingly to us His mercy. — Robert K. Massie

All a writer's characters are imaginary, no matter whether they are based on real people or not. They are people as one imagines them to be. — Allan Massie