Sublime

eight years of penal servitude,

you will find that every one, even the best of us, at times, is apt to act very queerly and unaccountably; indeed some things we do, we can not entirely explain the reason of, even to ourselves, little Pierre.

You should respond with kindness toward evil done to you, and you will destroy in an evil person that pleasure which he derives from evil. The true teaching of

The merit of a man is not in the knowledge he possesses, but in the effort he made to achieve it.

Peter’s ‘symbolic reforms’ were meant to drive home the terrible urgency of political change. After his European tour in 1698, he imposed a ban on beards and personally cut off those of his leading nobles. Russian traditional dress – a loose robe or kaftan – was also outlawed, and ‘German dress’ was imposed.

He regarded his whole life as a continual round of amusement which someone for some reason had to provide for him.