Catherine The Great Quotes

“Let me say to you what I said once, in an entirely different context to Catherine the Great," Magnus declared. "My dear lady, you cannot afford me,and also, please leave that horse alone. Good night.”
― Cassandra Clare, The Midnight Heir

“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, Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman

“My dear lady, you cannot afford me, and also, please leave that horse alone. - Magnus Bane, The Midnight Heir (The Bane Chronicles, 4) by Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan”
― Cassandra Clare, The Bane Chronicles

“The more a man knows, the more he forgives.”
― Catherine the Great

“A letter from 15 year old Sophia - later Catherine the Great - to her father:
My Lord: I beg you to assure yourself that your advice and exhortation will remain forever engraved on my heart, as the seeds of the holy faith will in my soul, to which I pray God to lend all the strength it will need to sustain me through the temptations to which I expect to be exposed... I hope to have the consolation of being worthy of it, and likewise of continuing to receive good news of my dear Papa, and I am, as long as I live, and in an inviolable respect, my lord, your Highness's most humble, most obedient, and faithful daughter and servant, Sophia.”
― Robert K. Massie

“It was not the lover she regretted,' wrote a Swiss imperial tutor, who understood their relationship. 'It was the friend.”
― Simon Sebag Montefiore, Potemkin: Catherine the Great's Imperial Partner