"Peter the Great" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 19.—The sale of Peter the Great, 2:07-1/4, by W. E. D. Stokes of this city to Stoughton J. Fletcher, an Indianapolis banker, sets a new record for old horses. Not in any country, at any period, it is believed, has a horse of any breed brought so high a price at so great an age. Peter the ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... striking him a desperate blow. But Henry at Bosworth in 1485 still belonged to the days of chivalry—to an era in which monarchs were also armour-clad knights, who headed charges in person and gave and took with spear, sword, and battle-axe. Long before Peter the Great, more than two centuries after Bosworth, foamed at the mouth with rage and hacked with his sword at his panicstricken troops fleeing from the field of Narva on that winter day of 1700, the face of warfare had altered and the metier of the commander, were he sovereign ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... Peter the Great, of Russia, kept the Christmas of 1697 in England, residing at Sayes Court, a house of the celebrated John Evelyn, close ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... and as a fair was to open in the place that afternoon, the most public parts of them were sanded for the occasion, but elsewhere, they appeared as if just washed and mopped. I have never seen any collection of human habitations so free from any thing offensive to the senses. Saardam, where Peter the Great began his apprenticeship as a shipwright, is among the sights of Holland, and we went the next day to look at it. This also is situated on a dyke, and is an extremely neat little village, but has not the same ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... allowed to seize these provinces, to increase her population and man power enormously, a second great war like this one will not be far off and Russia, deprived of what Peter the Great called "His window on the Baltic," will lose her place as an ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... that time vanished, visibly, as I told you, before the faces of half-a-dozen credible witnesses! The other was a Russian nobleman, six feet high and upwards, who, standing in the center of the room, downstairs, describing to seven gentlemen of unquestionable veracity the last moments of Peter the Great, and having a glass of eau de vie in his left hand, and his tasse de cafe, nearly finished, in his right, in like manner vanished. His boots were found on the floor where he had been standing; ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... already formed a very high opinion of the Russian character. Much can be done by sympathy and persuasion, but if they fail, then the "big stick" of Peter the Great, used sparingly, is the only method which is certain to secure obedience ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... first serious effort in historical composition was an article of fifty pages in "The North American Review" for October, 1845. This was nominally a notice of two works, one on Russia, the other "A Memoir of the Life of Peter the Great." It is, however, a narrative rather than a criticism, a rapid, continuous, brilliant, almost dramatic narrative. If there had been any question as to whether the young novelist who had missed his first ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... aware that in Little Russia, the people call tobacco the Devil's herb; and it is related that the devil planted it under the form of an idolater. For my part I am quite prepared to adopt the opinion of the Russian people. Before the time of Peter the Great, smoking was ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... dare you name such abominations to a Liberal Empress? You will always be a savage and a fool, Naryshkin. These relics of barbarism are buried, thank God, in the grave of Peter the Great. My methods are more civilized. [She extends ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... gave me five fairly good horses, ten sheep and a bag of flour, which was immediately transformed into dry bread. My friend presented him with a Romanoff five-hundred-rouble note with a picture of Peter the Great upon it, while I gave to him a small nugget of gold which I had picked up in the bed of a stream. The Prince ordered one of the Soyots to guide us to the Kosogol. The whole family of the Prince conducted us to the monastery ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... rude society, and paved the way for final success. Every one of these was a "foreigner." The princes whom they served [Page 102] deserve no small praise for having the good sense to appreciate them and the courage to follow their advice. Of some of these it might be said, as Voltaire remarked of Peter the Great, "They civilised their people, but themselves were savages." The world forgets how much the great czar was indebted for education and guidance to Le Fort, a Genevese soldier of fortune. Pondering that history one is able to gauge the merits of those foreign chancellors, perhaps also to ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... reach Alaska were Russians led by Vitus Bering, a great Danish sea captain in the Russian service. Bering was born in 1680 at Horsens, in the province of Aarhuus, E. Denmark, and entered the service of Peter the Great, who was desirous of knowing where Asia terminated and America began. Bering discovered the straits which bear his name in 1728, and in 1741 was wrecked and died on Bering's Island. Captain James Cook, the British discoverer ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... waited, with her little arms crossed, for about a quarter of an hour. At last the Senor de Quinones, after playing a good card, condescended to cast a severe look upon the child which turned her pale. He then stretched out his aristocratic hand with a gesture worthy of his namesake, Peter the Great of Russia, and Josefina pressed her trembling lips upon it and then withdrew. The bombastic old fellow was not quite pleased at his wife treating the little foundling with so much indulgence, but he consented because it flattered his vanity, for ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... would make him at least semi-royal and the chief of a principality. He hastened thither and found that money was needed to carry out his plans. The widow of the late duke—the Grand Duchess Anna, niece of Peter the Great, and later Empress of Russia—as soon as she had met this dazzling genius, offered to help him to acquire the duchy if he would only marry her. He did not utterly refuse. Still another woman of high rank, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia, Peter the Great's daughter, ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... in exploration. Among the explorers Captain Veit Bering of the Russian navy was the most eminent. In the early part of the eighteenth century Bering was commanded by Peter the Great to take up the search for the long-sought passage. He explored the northeastern coast of Asia as far north as sixty-seven degrees latitude, discovering a fact hitherto unknown, that North America is separated from Asia by a narrow passage ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... marine painter and styled the English Canaletto, he was called by Horace Walpole "the first painter of the age—one whose works will charm any age," and was also a friend of Hogarth; also Alexander Cozens, born in Russia and the reputed son of Peter the Great, but lately it has been suggested that Richard Cozens, a ship-builder, who went to Russia in 1700, may have been his father. He was sent to Italy to study art, and afterwards came to England. He professed to teach amateurs how to produce pictures without ...
— Masters of Water-Colour Painting • H. M. Cundall
... the seventeenth century, at a time when there was great excitement in royal and political circles. The young czar Feodor had recently died, and he had named as his successor his half-brother Peter, a boy ten years of age, who afterward became Peter the Great. The late czar's young brother Ivan should have succeeded him, but he was almost an idiot. In this complicated state of things, the half-sister of Peter, the Princess Sophia, a young woman of wonderful ambition and really great abilities, ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... Nicolai Demidoff (1774-1828), one of the least distinguished members of his family, who have been the mining-kings of Russia for two centuries. The contemporary of Peter the Great was ennobled by him (without receiving a title), and in the patent it was decreed that the family should be for ever free from military and other service, "that they may devote themselves to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... transitory man, nor the footstep of thousands of years, have entirely destroyed, entirely trodden down, the remains of immemorial antiquity. These places awake in me solemn and sacred thoughts. I wandered over the traces of Peter the Great; I pictured him the founder, the reformer, of a young state—building it on these ruins of the decaying monarchies of Asia, from the centre of which he tore out Russia, and with a mighty hand rolled her into Europe. What a fire must have gleamed in his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... took for his model Peter the Great. Never were two sovereigns more unlike each other. Peter, generous and humane, leaving his throne and travelling in disguise to educate himself, stands in bold contrast with the parsimonious and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in 1571. The first regular German newspaper appeared at Frankfort, and was entitled Frankfurter Oberpostamtszeitung, in 1615. The first French was brought out by Renaudot, a physician, in 1632. The first Russian paper came out under the auspices of Peter the Great, in 1703, and was styled the St. Petersburg Gazette. Spain did not enter the lists until a year later, and the Gazeta de Madrid was born in 1704. It could not have been worth much as a newspaper, inasmuch as the defeat off Cape St. Vincent did ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... Tordenskjold overheard it, had himself rowed across to Sweden, picked up there a wedding party, bridegroom, minister, guests, and all, including the captain of the shore watch who was among them, and returned in time for the palace dinner with his catch. King Frederik was entertaining Czar Peter the Great, who had been boasting of the unhesitating loyalty of his men which his Danish host could not match. He now had the tables turned upon him. It is recorded that the King sent the party back with royal gifts ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... husband, a sincere friend, and an honest man", so says his tombstone in Christ Church yard. He had an important part in the privateering expeditions from Philadelphia in this war. In the Memoirs of Peter Henry Bruce, chiefly occupied with his service in the Russian army under Peter the Great, but ending with a narrative of military engineering services in the Bahamas and South Carolina, that author gives an account (pp. 403-408, 421) of the capture of two rich Spanish prizes in September, 1742, ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... Buonaparte held themselves high above the moral law which obliges common-place humanity. All three are charged with the Vice. Of Kings we have Henri iii., Louis xiii. and xviii., Frederick ii. Of Prussia Peter the Great, William ii. of Holland and Charles ii. and iii. of Parma. We find also Shakespeare (i., xv., Edit. Francois Hugo) and Moliere, Theodorus Beza, Lully (the Composer), D'Assoucy, Count Zintzendorff, the Grand Conde, Marquis de Villette, Pierre Louis Farnese, Duc de la Valliere, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... of knowledge which had been gained by these successive bold pushes towards north and east, it still remained uncertain whether Siberia did not join on to the northern part of the New World discovered by Columbus and Amerigo, and in 1728 Peter the Great sent out an expedition under VITUS BEHRING, a Dane in the Russian service, with the express aim of ascertaining this point. He reached Kamtschatka, and there built two vessels as directed by the Czar, and started on his voyage northward, coasting along the land. When ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... a school where the motto was, "Even in this good reign I pray because I wish to make our country more glorious." There were portraits of four deceased local celebrities and of Peter the Great, Franklin, Lincoln, Commander Perry and Bismarck. Illustrated wall charts showed how to sit on a school seat, how to identify poisonous plants and how to conform to the requirements of etiquette. The following admonitions were also displayed—a copy of them is given to each ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... singers until dawn, careered in sledges about the most silent and stately of capitals, and returned with Lionel, discoursing upon autocracy and assassination, Japan, the Russian destiny, and the government of Peter the Great. That excursion was the most after his heart of all the dispersed employments of his first year. Through the rest of the winter he kept himself very fit, and still further qualified that nervous dislike for the horse that he had acquired ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... other world. They sat together as a family: the elder Meekers; the wife's sister; a boy, Albert, of fourteen; Ena, close to twenty; and Jannie, a girl seventeen years old and the medium proper. Jannie's familiar spirit was called Stepan. He had, it seemed, lived and died in the reign of Peter the Great; yet he was still actual, but unmaterialized, and extremely anxious to reassure every one through Jannie of the supernal happiness of the beyond. What messages I read, glancing over hysterical pages, gave me singularly little comfort, with the possible exception of the statement ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Nottingham. He was born at that town A.D. 1679. Though of gentle parentage, in his early days he followed the occupation of a drover. He then went to sea, and became a Captain in the Navy; after that he was a Merchant Adventurer. He next took service under Peter the Great, and commanded a Russian ship-of-war. On leaving Russia, he obtained the post of British Consul at Ostend, held by him for many years. Returning home, he was made a Burgess of his native town, and took up his abode at the neighbouring village of Wilford, where, in 1760, he died. In the quiet ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... were somewhat embarrassed by the secret treaties relating to Russia and Italy, which were later made public by the Bolsheviki. In March, 1915, England and France had made an agreement with Russia by which she was to get Constantinople, the aim of her policy since the days of Peter the Great. By the secret Treaty of London, signed April 26, 1915, England, France, and Russia had promised Italy that she should receive the Trentino and Southern Tyrol, including in its population more than 250,000 Germans. Italy was also promised Trieste and the Istrian peninsula, the boundary running ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... shores of a part of Russia, not generally much noticed in geographical works; I mean the two divisions of the Russian territories, known by the names of Revel and Livonia. The waters of the Gulf of Finland also extend to the greatest town in this country of ice and snow, St. Petersburgh, founded by Peter the Great in 1703, and seated on an island in the middle of the river Neva, near the bottom of the gulf, and which, from the singularity in its buildings, streets, people, and customs, is well worth a visit. The inconveniences caused by travelling ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... commencing idea, would be at once knocked on the head by a single "pooh." The rising Artist has an infant design for some immense historical Fresco. He comes—I see him, as it were, coming to Boodels to confide in him. "I mean," says he, "to show Peter the Great in the right-hand corner, and Peter the Hermit in another, with Peter Martyr somewhere else, ... in fact, I see an immense historical subject of all the Celebrated Peters .... Then why not offer it to St. Peter's at Rome, and why not ...?" "Pooh!" says Boodels, and the artist perhaps ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... Paris; she has approached four hundred and fifty miles nearer to Constantinople; she has possessed herself of the capital of Poland, and has advanced to within a few miles of the capital of Sweden, from which, when Peter the Great mounted the throne, her frontier was distant three hundred miles. Since that time she has stretched herself forward about one thousand miles towards India, and the same distance towards the capital of Persia." [Progress of Russia in ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... a man stood at the eastern window of a room which formed the top story of one of the houses in Peter the Great Terrace—that survival from the early nineteenth century which forms a kind of recess in the broad thoroughfare linking Waterloo Bridge with the Strand. The man's name was Shirley Sherston, and among the happy, prosperous few who are concerned with such things, he was known ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... The White Czar is Peter the Great. Batyushka, Father dear, and Gosudar, Sovereign, are titles the Russian people are fond of giving to the Czar in their ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... he possesses that gigantic strength which Homer so loved in his heroes, and which inspires such respect among barbarous nations. To strike off the head of a bull with a blow of his scimitar—to execute, like Peter the Great, his victims with his own hand—to fall, dead drunk, amid the broken wrecks of champagne bottles, are three diversions of his. But latterly his manners, from his intercourse with Europeans, have been somewhat polished, ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... no lovelier woman in all the Russias than Carolina, the wife of Alexis, eldest son and presumptive heir to Peter the Great. Her beauty was not only that of the body, for her sweet temper and gentle disposition made her beloved by all who were brought in contact with her. The only being who did not yield to the charms of her surpassing beauty and amiability ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... Pushkin was born at Moscow on June 7, 1799. He came of an ancient family, a strange ancestor being a favourite negro ennobled by Peter the Great, who bequeathed to him a mass of curly hair and a somewhat darker skin than usually falls to the lot of the ordinary Russian. Early in life a daring "Ode to Liberty" brought him the displeasure of the court, and the young ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... just compensation for a machine that revolutionized the commerce of the country, and added enormously to the power and progress of the Republic. Lord Macaulay said that Eli Whitney did more to make the United States powerful than Peter the Great did to make the Russian Empire dominant. Robert Fulton declared that Arkwright, Watt, and Whitney were the three men that did more for mankind than any of their contemporaries. This is easy to believe, when we remember that while the South shipped 6 ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... North Europe was soon aflame with the wars of those remarkable monarchs, Charles XII. and Peter the Great; and the rest of Europe over the Spanish succession. The mother and wife of Louis were each eldest daughters of a Spanish king; the mother and wife of the Emperor Leopold were their younger sisters. Austrian and French successions were ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... other early scientific societies was the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg, projected by Peter the Great, and established by his widow, Catharine I., in 1725; and also the Royal Swedish Academy, incorporated in 1781, and counting among its early members such men as the celebrated Linnaeus. But after the first impulse had resulted in a few learned societies, their manifest advantage was so evident ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... XV. History of the Russian Fleet during the Reign of Peter the Great. By a Contemporary Englishman. Edited by Admiral Sir Cyprian ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... marshal and Earl of Norfolk. See Norfolk, Earl of. Bigorre, county of. Biscay, Bay of. Blaauw's Barons' Wars. Black Prince, the. See Edward, Prince of Wales and Aquitaine. Black death, the. Blacklow Hill. Blanche of Artois, Queen of Navarre. Blanche of Bourbon, wife of Peter the Great of Castile. Blanche of Castile, Queen of Louis VIII. and regent of France. Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster. Blanche taque, the, in estuary of Somme. Blaneforde's Chronicle Blankenberghe. Blavet, the river. Blaye. Bliss' Calendars ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... were vigorous peoples with an impulse to expand and to extend their civilisation over backward lands. They appealed solely to the right of the sword, and all the Christian authorities in Europe—the bishops of William and of Anne, the bishops of Louis XIV, the bishops of Peter the Great—had not a single syllable to say against the right of the sword. The various branches of the Christian Church were at that time singularly unanimous in accommodating their principles to imperialist and aggressive warfare. Now that you have obtained ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... the idea of closer intercourse with a Church of such ancient splendour and such pretensions to primitive orthodoxy. At the close of the seventeenth century this interest had been renewed by the visit of Peter the Great to this island. With a mind greedy after all manner of information, he had not omitted to inquire closely into ecclesiastical matters. People heard of his conversations on these subjects with Tenison and Burnet,[134] and wondered how far a monarch ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... a very old family, Bolt, and have been settled in England since the fourteenth century. A younger branch of the family has established itself in a pond in the gardens of Peterhoff (the celebrated palace of Peter the Great, Bolt,—an emperor highly respected by my brother, for he killed a great many people very gloriously in battle, besides those whom he sabred for his own private amusement); and there is an officer or ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... son of Katinka by Peter the Great, for $125! See what the letter says: 'Eleven months old, tall and strong in quarters, white, with even lemon markings, better head than Marksman, and a sure winner in the best of company.' Isn't that great? And I don't think $125 ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... are concentrated. Let us not deceive ourselves, and reap misery and disappointment by thinking that we can, by any effort, equal them. Alexander, Caesar, Richelieu, Napoleon, Bismarck, Washington, Darwin, Goethe, Shakespeare, Lincoln, Pasteur, Edison, Plato, Rhodes, Ito, Diaz, Peter the Great—we cannot explain these phenomena of human intellect and character except by ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... the pangs of a most sudden revolution. Against her will she was being suddenly and sharply modernized by Peter the Great, most famous of her czars. He had overthrown the turbulent militia who really ruled the land, and had waded through a sea of bloody executions to establish his own absolute power.[1] He had travelled abroad in disguise, studied shipbuilding ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... army under Charles XII, defeated by the Russians under Peter the Great, July 8, 1709. Victory of the American army under General Gates over the British under General Burgoyne ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... ought, therefore, to be everywhere adopted and followed. A house associated with Sir Joshua Reynolds and a house associated with Hogaith, both in Leicester Square, and houses associated with Benjamin Franklin and Peter the Great, in Craven Street; Sheridan, in Savile Row; Campbell, in Duke Street; Carrick, in the Adelphi Terrace; Mrs. Siddons, in Baker Street, and Michael Faraday, in Blandford Street, are only a few of the notable places which have been thus designated. More of such commemorative work remains ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... them, at least excluded the rabble from the resurrection. The Peruvians confined their heaven to the nobility. The New Zealanders said the souls of the Atuas, the nobles, were immortal, but the Cookees perished entirely. Meiners declares that the Russians, even so late as the times of Peter the Great, believed that only the Czar and the boyars could reach heaven. It was almost a universal custom among savage nations when a chieftain died to slay his wives and servants, that their ghosts might accompany his to paradise, to wait on him there as ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... how to embody in themselves the emotions and the desires of the masses—we may think of Jeanne d'Arc, Mahomet, Peter the Great, Napoleon I—were surrounded with a nimbus by the more or less blind belief of the people in their genius; this frequently acted with suggestive power upon the surrounding company which it carried away with a magic force to its leaders, and supported and aided the mission historically ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the declaration of war with Japan, Kouropatkine brought to Peterhof the French medium Jules Verrier, who received a handsome fee for pretending to get into touch with the spirit of Peter the Great, who declared that Russia, in declaring war, had carried out his wishes. And Nicholas was at once in high glee, and mightily enthusiastic to know that his historic ancestor approved of ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... round two or three great men, or as they were influenced by the speculations of men of letters and science. The history of France he stigmatized as savage and worthless till the reign of Louis XIV.; the Russians he looked upon as bitter barbarians till the time of Peter the Great. He thought the philosophers alone all in all; till they arose, and a sovereign appeared, who collected them round his throne, and shed on them the rays of royal favour, human events were not worth ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... Livonian peasant; "a little stumpy body, very brown,... strangely chased about from the bottom to the top of the world,... had once been a kitchen wench"; married first to a Swedish dragoon, became afterwards the mistress of Prince Menschikoff, and then of Peter the Great, who eventually married her; succeeded him as empress, with Menschikoff as minister; for a time ruled well, but in the end gave herself up ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Peter the Great, on his way to Paris, paid a tribute to his merit by visiting him, and placing at his disposal all the information he himself possessed ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... When Peter the Great heard any one speaking ill of another, he would inquire, "Is there not a fair side, also, to the character of the person of whom you are speaking? Come, tell me what good qualities you have remarked about him." If, in speaking ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... Frederick was a musician, for he both composed music and played the flute, while Jenny Lind, the Swedish nightingale, was a great singer. A contest between the nightingale and the flute was sure to follow or theatrical instinct is a vain phrase. But in the piece Scribe created, Peter the Great took Frederick the Great's place and to give a motive for the grace notes in the last act it was necessary for the terrible Tsar, a half savage barbarian, to learn to ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... astrologers, the same low-born associates, the same residence outside the influence of the great cities—a parallel could hardly be more complete. If you have not supped too full of horrors when you have finished Ivan, then pass on to the same author's account of Peter the Great. What a land! What a succession of monarchs! Blood and snow and iron! Both Ivan and Peter killed their own sons. And there is a hideous mockery of religion running through it all which gives it a grotesque horror of its own. We have had our Henry the Eighth, but our very worst ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was ever stopped more effectually by mountain or precipice than was our Indian chief's career by Moonlight's kerchief and knife. He reined in with such force as to throw his steed on its haunches, like the equestrian statue of Peter the Great; but, unlike the statuesque animal, Rushing River's horse came back to the position of all-fours, and stood transfixed and trembling. Vaulting off, the chief ran to the kerchief, and picked it up. Then he and Eaglenose examined it and the knife carefully, ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... Sergeyvitch Turgenev occupies a supreme position. He was born at Oriel in the Government of the same name, on November 9, 1818, and died on September 3, 1883. His father was a colonel in a cavalry regiment, and an ancestor was a James Turgenev who was one of Peter the Great's jesters. Educated at Moscow, St Petersburg, and Berlin, Ivan Turgenev began life in a government office, but after a year retired into private life. His early attempts at literature consisted chiefly of poems and sketches, none of which attracted any degree of attention; and it was not ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... when Peter the Great was Czar of Russia, and when the improvements that he was making all over the country gave foreign workmen a fine chance of earning high wages, a number of emigrants landed one cold winter morning at one of the Russian ports on the Gulf of Finland, ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... that passed around him, or with which he was connected, whether of a political, military, or personal nature. His field of service extended throughout the entire empire, and embraced the most important events in the reign of Peter the Great. He participated in the suppression of the corps of Strelitzes, made two campaigns against the Turks, was active in Peter's reorganization of the army, &c., &c. The first volume comes down to 1678; the remainder will soon follow. As the whole was written ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... smooth before the fall of Adam, and the present inequalities in its surface were the evidences of human sin." I was a boy at the time, and I thought to myself, "How fortunate it is that we are sinners!" Peter the Great, however, had no choice left him. The piles he drove in these marshes were the surest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... Poland barred his way to the Baltic. Just as in its subsequent history, so then, one of the great needs of Russia was for a good port. Another of her needs was for better technical processes. Anticipating Peter the Great, Ivan endeavored to get German workmen to initiate good methods, but he failed to accomplish much, partly because Charles V forbade his subjects to go to add ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Peter the Great of Russia was proclaimed czar at ten years of age; at twenty he organized a large army and built several ships; at twenty-four he fought the Turks and captured Asoph; at twenty-eight he made war with Sweden; at thirty he entered Moscow ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... and beheld 14 of them in a Dyke! and yesterday, on asking the Laquais de place if we should see anything curious at Saardam besides the Czar's house, he replied, "Oh que, oui—beaucoup de Moulins!" Peter the Great's house is a small wooden cottage close to the town, remarkable for nothing ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... Peter the Great, being at Westminster Hall in term time, and seeing multitudes of people swarming about the courts of law, is reported to have asked some about him, what all those busy people were, and what they were about? and being answered, "They are lawyers." "Lawyers!" returned he, with ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... that Peter the Great was one of his most ardent admirers. He consulted the astronomer on matters connected with shipbuilding, and invited him to his own table. But Halley possessed nobler qualifications than the capacity of pleasing Princes. He was able to excite and to ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... Mr. Croyden said. "Peter the Great was an ambitious ruler who traveled the Continent over to see what other countries were doing in the way of commerce and manufacture. When he returned from one of his pilgrimages he made the people build a new commercial ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... of Hercules was the scene of a ball in celebration of the coronation of the first Emperor of France. In May, 1814, Czar Alexander I of Russia visited Versailles with his two brothers, following the example of Peter the Great, who had been there when Louis XV was on the throne. Another historic cortege was composed of Frederick William III of Prussia and his two sons, one of whom, Prince William, was to return to Versailles in the year 1870 on a mission less peaceful. ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... Pushkin, whose "Ode to Liberty" cost him his freedom. He was exiled to Bessarabia [A region of Moldova and western Ukraine] from 1820 to 1825, whence he returned at the accession of the new emperor, Nicholas, who made him historiographer of Peter the Great. Pushkin's friends now looked upon him as a traitor to the cause of liberty. It is not improbable that an enforced residence at the mouth of the Danube somewhat cooled his patriotic enthusiasm. Every Autumn, his favorite season ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... whom nature had assigned a sterile yet immense place on the globe, the ninth part of the habitable world, and a population of forty millions of men, all compelled by the savage genius of Peter the Great to unite themselves into one nation, seemed yet to waver between two roads, one of which led to Germany, the other to the Ottoman empire. Catherine II. governed it: a woman endowed with wondrous beauty, passion, genius, and crime,—such are necessary in the ruler of a barbarous nation, in order ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Peter of Russia, during his travels became acquainted with Annibal, an African negro, who was intelligent and well educated. Peter the Great, true to his generous system of rewarding merit wherever he found it, made Annibal Lieutenant-General and Director of the Russian Artillery. He was decorated with the riband of the order of St. Alexander Nenski. His son, a mulatto, was Lieutenant-General of Artillery, and said to be a man of talent. ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... Red Star agreed; on the next, Pravda reviewed the "threatening situation." Two days later Izvestia devoted a column to "Blackmail, Peter the Great, Suvarov and Imperialist Slyness." Twentyfour hours after, the Ministerial Council of the Union of Soviet Republics declared a state of war existed—through no action of its own—between the United States ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... with amazement. It is expected that this newly-acquired territory will become of immense importance, the forests being situate so near such magnificent harbours. The labyrinth of bays, harbours, and islands is called the Gulf of Peter the Great, and the best port is named Vladiwosjok (Dominator of the East), because it is the cradle of the Russian fleet in the Pacific Ocean, and the commencement of Russian domination in the East. This letter was received at ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... "Both Peter the Great and Nicholas I were wiser than you, for they ordained that whosoever should be bearded should have his nose slit, and be fined a hundred roubles. Did you ever hear ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... the death of Count Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, as the result of a duel. His last work, the drama "Boris Goudunov," was left uncompleted. After his recall from his exile in Bessarabia, Pushkin had been appointed as imperial historian by Czar Nicholas, in which capacity he wrote a history of Peter the Great and an account of the conspiracy of Pugatshev. Of his poetic works, the most important was "Eugene Onegin," an epic written after the manner of Byron's "Don Juan." "Eugene Onegin" has remained one of the classics of Russian ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... intended to advance upon Moscow or upon St. Petersburg; nor had any systematic plan of the campaign been adopted by the Czar. The idea of falling back before the enemy was indeed familiar in Russia since the war between Peter the Great and Charles XII. of Sweden, and there was no want of good counsel in favour of a defensive warfare; [173] but neither the Czar nor any one of his generals understood the simple theory of a retreat in which no battles at all ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... named Bagueret, who had been employed under Peter the Great, of the court of Russia, one of the most worthless, senseless fellows I ever met with; full of projects as foolish as himself, which were to rain down millions on those who took part in them. This man, having come to Chambery on account ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... through whom he came into possession of Say's Court, which he made a gem of beauty. But in his later years he had the annoyance of seeing his fine parterres and shrubbery trampled down by that Northern boor, Peter the Great, who made his residence there while studying the mysteries of ship-building at Deptford, and who had as little reverence for a parterre of flowers as for any other of the tenderer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... himself. She was dressed in puce-coloured velvet, and had a diamond diadem on her forehead, and her plump, old white shoulders and bosom were bare like the portraits of Empress Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great. ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy |
