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Collected Works of Baroness Emma Orczy QUOTES

Collected Works of Baroness Emma Orczy QUOTES

1 " What did Volenski know of how he stood in the eyes of the Russian police? Living mostly abroad and consorting in a great measure with his own exiled countrymen, some small degree of suspicion was bound to remain attached to his name. He was a Pole, and, being a Pole, he conspired, not because he believed in all the Utopian theories set forth by his brother conspirators, but because it was in his blood to plot and plan against the existing government. "

― Emmuska Orczy , Collected Works of Baroness Emma Orczy

2 " that they are all willing over there to die for the good cause. They are not, as we are, fond of life and liberty; they love the cause first, themselves not at all. Why should we care what has happened to Volenski? What is one man against the weal of millions? "

― Emmuska Orczy , Collected Works of Baroness Emma Orczy

3 " Shrove Tuesday is the very last day, allowed by our Holy Mother the Church for revelry, before the long austere forty days of Lent, and if we do not make use of her full permission to enjoy ourselves, to the full extent of out capacity, we shall have nothing left to atone for to-morrow, when the good fathers place the cross of ashes on our foreheads, and bid us remember that dust we are, to dust return. "

― Emmuska Orczy , Collected Works of Baroness Emma Orczy

4 " That I do not know yet; I have only vague thoughts in my mind. But hate, remember, is a hard and very efficient task-master, and I hate that man, Nicolaes, almost as much as I hate the Prince of Orange. But ’tis the Prince’s death which I want first; because of this my hatred of the rascal must lie dormant just a few days. But it shall lose nothing by waiting, and already I see before me visions of an exemplary revenge which shall satisfy you and gratify my hate. "

― Emmuska Orczy , Collected Works of Baroness Emma Orczy

5 " He usually shrank from extreme measures. Mirkovitch’s bloodthirsty speeches grated upon his nerves, and having spent a miracle of ingenuity in combining some deadly plot that would annihilate the tyrant and his brood, Iván would have preferred that it should not be carried out at all, but left as a record of what a Pole’s mind can devise against his hated conquerors. It was not indecision; it was horror of a refined and even plucky nature, of deeds that would not brook the light of day. He would have liked to lead a Polish insurrection, but feared to handle an assassin’s dagger. "

― Emmuska Orczy , Collected Works of Baroness Emma Orczy

6 " Her profession? Ah! as to that, English readers, try not to be too severe. Russia is a great, but hard mistress, who demands of all her children work according to their means and ability. The word spy has an ugly meaning with us, we loathe it, if applied to a man, and cannot even conceive it as an attribute to a young and gifted woman. But in Russia, where all round an absolute monarchy a web of intrigue and conspiracy is woven, where blows are aimed and dealt at the head of the State from every quarter of the Empire, from every class of society, and always from the dark, these blows must be met with counter-blows of the same nature, secret, swift, and dark. An enemy, hidden behind every pillar of a palace, can but be fought by means as secret as his own. "

― Emmuska Orczy , Collected Works of Baroness Emma Orczy