Ivan the Terrible Quotes

“Alas for me a sinner, woe to me in my despair, Oh me, in my foulness...it behooves you, our masters to illuminate us who have lost our way in the darkness of pride, who are mired in sinful vanity, gluttony and intemperance. And I, a stinking hound, whom can I teach, what can I preach, and with what can I enlighten others? Myself always wallowing in drunkenness, fornication, adultery, filth, murders, rapine, despoliation, hatred and all sorts of evil-doing.'
- Tsar Ivan IV ("Ivan the Terrible") to Abbot Koz'ma of the Beloozero monastery, 1573”
― Isabel de Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible