Robert Teeter

“He [Tsar Nicholas I] had done much evil to the Poles. To explain that evil he had to be convinced that all Poles were scoundrels. And Nicholas regarded them as such and hated them in proportion to the evil he had done them.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murád

“My father says that believing or not believing doesn't matter; what is important is speaking with God.”
― Marjorie Agosín, A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile

“Yes, what would Russia be without me?" he [Tsar Nicholas I] said to himself, again sensing the approach of the unpleasant feeling. "Yes, what would, not just Russia, but Europe be without me?" And he remembered his brother-in-law, the king of Prussia, and his weakness and stupidity and shook his head.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murád

“Elena Pavlovna was for him [Tsar Nicholas I] the personification of those empty people who talked not only about science and poetry, but also about governing people, imagining that they could govern themselves better than he, Nicholas, governed them.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murád