Tsars Quotes & Sayings

There is history the way Tolstoy imagined it, as a great, slow-moving weather system in which even tsars and generals are just leaves before the storm. And there is history the way Hollywood imagines it, as a single story line in which the right move by the tsar or the wrong move by the general changes everything. Most of us, deep down, are probably Hollywood people. We like to invent "what if" scenarios
what if x had never happened, what if y had happened instead?
because we like to believe that individual decisions make a difference: that, if not for x, or if only there had been y, history might have plunged forever down a completely different path. Since we are agents, we have an interest in the efficacy of agency. — Louis Menand

I deny that either singers or conductors can create or work creatively - this, as I have always said, is a conception that leads to the abyss. — Giuseppe Verdi

It's tough. And yet the Bible makes it very clear that we are to make time for rest. More than just physical rest, we need to take a spiritual and emotional rest from going our own way - literally. Once a week, we are to hit the pause button on life and guard a day of rest for our souls. Guard it fiercely and intentionally - even if the demands on our schedules beg us not to. — Lysa TerKeurst

The most damning and hypocritical critiques of his allegedly aristocratic economic system emanated from the most aristocratic southern slaveholders, who deflected attention from their own nefarious deeds by posing as populist champions and assailing the northern financial and mercantile interests aligned with Hamilton. As will be seen, the national consensus that the slavery issue should be tabled to preserve the union meant that the southern plantation economy was effectively ruled off-limits to political discussion, while Hamilton's system, by default, underwent the most searching scrutiny. Few, — Ron Chernow

Now we'd help her if we could. We can't. So we're helping you. That's all that most of us who are not Tsars or witches can manage to do. — Gregory Maguire

Tsars were autocrats, often tyrannical, who held total control over everything and everyone in Russia, — Roy A. Adkins

I was not born to amuse the Tsars. — Alexander Pushkin

People do this a lot. They don't seem to realise that the future is just like now, but in a little while, so they say they're going to do things in anticipation of some kind of seismic shift in their worldview that never actually materialises. But everything's not going to be made of leather, the world won't stink of sherbet. Tomorrow is not some mythical kingdom where you'll grow butterfly wings and be able to talk to animals - you'll basically feel pretty much the same way you do at the moment. — Russell Brand

As a reader, I happen to like turning pages and wanting to know what happens next. — Tracy Chevalier

The time for princes and tsars and holy madmen was gone.
In its place came a world of war and revolution, of tanks and
telephones, murder and assassination. — Marcus Sedgwick

I've got very strong hands from playing for many years. — Robin Trower

But miracles are not for the asking; they come only when the stern eyes of God droop shut for a moment, and Our Lady takes advantage of His inattention to grant an illicit mercy. God ... is an Anglican, whereas Our Lady is of the True Faith; the two of Them have an uneasy relationship, unable to agree on anything, except that if They divorce, the Devil will leap gleefully into the breach. — Michel Faber

The incarnation is not a soul into a body, it is an illusory world known as a life into consciousness. — One Iam

In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs and other heads of states. — Leo Tolstoy

An effective tsar could be harsh provided he was consistently harsh. Rulers are often killed not for brutality but for inconsistency. And tsars had to inspire trust and respect among their courtiers but sacred reverence among the peasantry, 90 per cent of their subjects, who saw them as "Little Fathers." They were expected to be severe to their officials but benign to their peasant "children": "the tsar is good," peasants said, "the nobles are wicked. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

[The Albanians] seem to be rather backward and primitive people ... they can be as faithful as a dog; that is one of the traits of the primitive. Our Chuvash were the same. The Russian tsars always used them for their bodyguards. — Joseph Stalin

The time for princes and tsars and grand duchesses and especially holy madmen was gone. In its place came a world of war and revolution, of tanks and telephones, of murder and assassination. The bear had already become what it had been waiting to be, and the men who set it on its journey changed too. Lev became Trotsky, Vladimir took the name Lenin, and they stepped into a bright and furious modern world; blood red, and snow white. — Marcus Sedgwick

Money can turn into everything but we can only turn into ourselves. — Stephen Marche

If you look back in history, as the barbarians were invading the gates of Rome, people were consulting fortunetellers and worrying about the end of the world and all sorts of other apocalyptic notions. When the tsars were finally overthrown, they were all reading tarot cards even as the revolutionaries were banging at the gates. — Matt Taibbi

Antisemitism is unique among religious hatreds. It is a racist conspiracy theory fashioned for the needs of messianic and brutal rulers, as dictators from the Tsars to the Islamists via the Nazis have shown. Many other alleged religious 'hatreds' are not hatreds in the true sense. If I criticise Islamic, Orthodox Jewish or Catholic attitudes towards women, for instance, and I'm accused of being a bigot, I shrug and say it is not bigoted to oppose bigotry. — Nick Cohen

In America, snobs who wouldn't be seen dead with a lottery ticket play the stock market. We like to gamble. Winning, we have closed our eyes, leapt across the yawning abyss, and landed knee-deep in daisies. Even losing has a certain gloomy glamour: the gods of chance are worthy opponents; we have engaged them in hand-to-hand combat and though we lost, at least we shrank not from the contest. — Barbara Holland

I don't suppose you molested me while I was all tied up?" That out-of-the-blue query had her mouth hanging open, and she blinked. "Are you for real?" "Totally. Want to touch me again and see? — Eve Langlais

Some of the parables of the Kingdom made wonderful sense, but the exclusivity in the New Testament put me off. — Lionel Blue

When I left 'American Morning' in 2007, I'd focused on doing documentaries. But I thought 'Starting Point' was a great opportunity to be involved in the zeitgeist. — Soledad O'Brien

The Soviet Union had achieved an unusual boon through the pact. The Eastern part of Europe, from the Baltic to the Black Sea was declared as their sphere of influence. They spelled out by name the three Baltic republics: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia - all three formerly, under the tsars, Russian territory. The two signatories included as part of the Soviet sphere of influence Bessarabia. Northern Bukovina had not been included in that sinister deal, yet Russia made its own decision to annex it, together with Bessarabia. They made it a kind of connecting bridge to Southern Poland. — Pearl Fichman

Tsars and slaves, the intelligent and the obtuse, publicans and pharisees all have an identical legal and moral right to honor the memory of the deceased as they see fit, without regard for anyone else's opinion and without the fear of hindering one another. — Anton Chekhov

Everybody's mainspring is different. And I want to say this - folks whose mainsprings are busted are better dead. — Margaret Mitchell