Best 17 quotes of Robert K. Massie on MyQuotes

Four of my children are daughters, and Ive 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.

In Russia everything is a secret, but there is no secrecy.

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.

The love of power and the power to attract love were not easy to reconcile.

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.

In his work habits, Nicholas was solitary. Unlike most monarchs and chiefs of state—unlike even his own wife—he had no private secretary. He preferred to do things for himself. On his desk he kept a large calendar of his daily appointments, scrupulously entered in his own hand. When official papers arrived, he opened them, read them, signed them and put them in envelopes himself.

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.

In the evening after supper, Nicholas often sat in the family drawing room reading aloud while his wife and daughters sewed or embroidered. His choice, said Anna Vyrubova, who spent many of these cozy evenings with the Imperial family, might be Tolstoy, Turgenev or his own favorite, Gogol. On the other hand, to please the ladies, it might be a fashionable English novel. Nicholas read equally well in Russian, English and French and he could manage in German and Danish.

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.

Nicholas never mastered the technique of forceful, efficient management of subordinates. He hated scenes and found it impossible to sternly criticize or dismiss a man to his face. If something was wrong, he preferred to give a minister a friendly reception, comment gently and shake hands warmly. Occasionally, after such an interview, the minister would return to his office, well pleased with himself, only to receive in the morning mail a letter regretfully asking for his resignation. Not unnaturally, these men complained that they had been deceived.

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.

She had dealt with her pregnancy by wrapping herself in dreams.

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.

The most famous room in the palace—for a time the most famous room in Russia—was the Empress’s mauve boudoir. Everything in it was mauve: curtains, carpet, pillows; even the furniture was mauve-and-white Hepplewhite. Masses of fresh white and purple lilacs, vases of roses and orchids and bowls of violets perfumed the air. Tables and shelves were cluttered with books, papers and porcelain and enamel knicknacks. In this room, Alexandra surrounded herself with mementoes of her family and her religion. The walls were covered with icons. Over her chaise-longue hung a picture of the Virgin Mary. A portrait of her mother, Princess Alice, looked down from another wall. On a table in a place of honor stood a large photograph of Queen Victoria. The only portrait in the room other than religious and family pictures was a portrait of Marie Antoinette.

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.

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.

Unlike many a royal couple, Nicholas and Alexandra shared the same bed. The bedroom was a large chamber with tall windows opening onto the park. A large double bed made of light-colored wood stood between two windows. Chairs and couches covered in flowered tapestry were scattered about on a thick carpet of mauve pile. To the right of the bed, a door led to a small chapel used by the Empress for her private prayers. Dimly lit by hanging lamps, the room contained only an icon on one wall and a table holding a Bible. Another door led from the bedroom to Alexandra’s private bathroom, where a collection of old-fashioned fixtures were set in a dark recess.