CATHERINE THE GREAT: portrait of a woman by Robert Masie

Catherine the Great is recognized for her progressist rulership, but she is also known for the large number of lovers she took outside of her marriage. You have to take into consideration that eight years after her marriage, she was still a virgin…
“Although she had understood from the beginning that to love a husband who was not lovable and who made no effort to become so was a difficult and probably impossible task, she believed that she had made a sincere effort to devote herself to him and his interests.”

It was interesting to read her account of herself when she was an older woman, and she was looking at herself and her life:

“My natural pride made the idea of being miserable intolerable to me. I used to say to myself that happiness and misery depend on ourselves. If you feel unhappy, rise above it and act so your happiness may be independent of all outside events.
I had been born with this disposition, and a face that was, at the very least, interesting, and which pleased at first sight without art or pretense.
My disposition was naturally so conciliatory that no one ever spent a quarter of an hour with me without feeling perfectly at ease and talking to me as though they had known me for a long time.
I easily won the confidence of those who had anything to do with me because everyone felt that I displayed honesty and goodwill.”

“I have just said that I was attractive; consequently, half the road of temptation was already traveled, and it is only human in such situations that one should not stop half way.
For to tempt and to be tempted are closely allied and, in spite of all the finest maxims of morality, whenever emotion has anything to do with the matter, one is already much further involved than one realizes. 

And I have still not learned how to prevent emotion being excited.
Flight, perhaps, is the only remedy. But there are cases and circumstances, in which flight is impossible. And if you do not run away, nothing is more difficult, in my opinion, than to escape from something that essentially attracts you. 

All statements made to contrary will appear only a prudishness quite out of harmony with the natural instincts of the human heart.

Besides, one cannot hold one’s heart in one’s hand, tightening or relaxing one’s grasp at will.”

Publisher: Head of Zeus Ltd., 2011