Russia: Its People and Its Literature

“A nation which receives a culture ready made, and not elaborated by itself, condemns itself to intellectual sterility; at most it can only hope to imitate well.””

— Emilia, condesa de Pardo Bazán

“Regent, Boris Godonof, riveted the chains of slavery upon the wrists of many millions of human beings in Russia.””

— Emilia, condesa de Pardo Bazán

“Like a stripped and lifeless trunk the Oriental church produces no theologians, thinkers, or savants.””

— Emilia, condesa de Pardo Bazán

“The government makes use of the clergy as of one arm more, which, however, is now almost powerless through corruption. The Oriental church has no conception of the noble devotion which has honored Catholicism in the lives of Saint Thomas of Canterbury and Cardinal Cisneros. The””

— Emilia, condesa de Pardo Bazán

“Mercenariness, pride, routine, and indolence are the capital sins of the Russian office-holder, and the first has so strong a hold upon him that the people say, "To make yourself understood by him you must talk of rubles;" adding that in Russia everybody robs but Christ, who cannot because his hands are nailed down.””

— Emilia, condesa de Pardo Bazán

“And what great thing have you done?" asked the peasant. "We? Oh, nothing." "Then to the oven!" he replied. The””

— Emilia, condesa de Pardo Bazán

“Spain also suffered an invasion of a foreign race, but she pulled herself together and sustained herself on a war-footing for seven centuries.””

— Emilia, condesa de Pardo Bazán

“Russia was suddenly invaded by the Mongols, and, like locusts in a corn-field, those hideous and demoniacal foes fell upon her and made all Christendom tremble, so that the French historian Joinville records it as a sign of the coming of Antichrist. "For our sins the unknown nations covered our land," say the Russian chroniclers.””

— Emilia, condesa de Pardo Bazán

“But even more aggravating to the Russian is the Jewish usurer, who since the Middle Ages has fastened himself like a leach upon producer and consumer, and who, if he does not borrow or lend, begs; and if he does not beg, carries on some suspicious business. A nation within a nation, the Jews are sometimes made the victims of popular hatred; the usually gentle Russians sometimes rise in sudden wrath, and the newspapers report to us dreadful accounts of an assault and murder of Hebrews. Russian””

— Emilia, condesa de Pardo Bazán