Catherine the Great Quotes
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One cannot always know what children are thinking. Children are hard to understand, especially when careful training has a custom them to obedience and experience has made them cautious in conversation with their teachers.
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I like to praise and reward in a loud voice and to scold in a whisper.
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In politics a capable ruler must be guided by circumstances, conjectures and conjunctions.
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You can be a murderous tyrant and the world will remember you fondly but fuck one horse and you will be a horse fucker for all eternity.
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I may be kindly, I am ordinarily gentle, but in my line of business I am obliged to will terribly what I will at all.
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For to tempt and to be tempted are things very nearly allied - whenever feeling has anything to do in the matter, no sooner is it excited than we have already gone vastly farther than we are aware of.
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I do not love strife, because I have always found that in the end each remains of the same opinion.
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The more a man knows, the more he forgives.
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Madame, you must be gay; only thus can life be endured. I speak from experience for I have had to endure much, and have only been able to endure it because I have always laughed whenever I had the chance.
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You should know our mania for building is stronger than ever. It is a diabolical thing. It consumes money and the more you build, the more you want to build. It's a sickness like being addicted to alcohol.
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The use of torture is contrary to sound judgment and common sense. Humanity itself cries out against it, and demands it to be utterly abolished.
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You philosophers are lucky men. You write on paper and paper is patient. Unfortunate Empress that I am, I write on the susceptible skins of living beings.
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Nothing is more difficult, in my opinion, than to avoid something that fundamentally attracts you.
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I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.
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All punishments by which the human body might be maimed are barbarbarism.
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I shall be an autocrat: that's my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that's his.
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Bad news travels faster than good.
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Men make love more intensely at 20, but make love better, however, at 30.
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Power without a nation's confidence is nothing.
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Any man who doesn't partake in cigar smoking is nothing more than a weak-willed, meandering oaf, and I would never put my lips to those of any creature, man or beast, whose lips were not fresh awash in the currents of cigar smoke.'
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I sincerely want peace, not because I lack resources for war, but because I hate bloodshed.
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I praise loudly. I blame softly.
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Don't worry about things you cannot alter
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One cannot always know what children are thinking. Children are hard to understand, especially when careful training has accustomed them to obedience, and experience has made them cautious in their conversation with their teachers. Will you not draw from this the fine maxim that one should not scold children too much, but should make them trustful, so that they will not conceal their stupidities from us?