In Russian administration, minuteness does not exclude disorder. Much trouble is taken to attain unimportant ends, and those … - Marquis de Custine

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I give money for church organs in the hope the organ music will distract the congregation's attention from the rest of the service.

Marquis de Custine

In Russian administration, minuteness does not exclude disorder. Much trouble is taken to attain unimportant ends, and those employed believe they can never do enough to show their zeal. The result is. . . that having passed through one formality does not secure the stranger from another.

Administration, Believe, Ends, Show, Taken, Unimportant

Same Author Quotes

In Russia, whatever be the appearance of things, violence and arbitrary rule is at the bottom of them all. Tyranny rendered calm by the influence of terror is the only kind of happiness which this government is able to afford its people.

Government, Happiness, Influence, Kind, People, Russia

Grace is always natural, though that does not prevent its being often used to hide a lie. The rude shocks and uncomfortably constraining influences of life disappear among graceful women and poetical men; they are the most deceptive beings in creation; distrust and doubt cannot stand before them; they create what they imagine; if they do not lie to others, they do to their own hearts; for illusion is their element, fiction their vocation, and pleasures in appearance their happiness. Beware of grace in woman, and poetry in man -- weapons the more dangerous because the least dreaded!

Among, Constraining, Doubt, Heart, Lying, Men

I do not believe I am exaggerating in affirming that the empire of Russia is a country whose inhabitants are the most miserable on earth, because they suffer at one and the same time the evils of barbarism and of civilization.

Believe, Country, Evils, Exaggerating, Inhabitants, Russia

The circumstances of human society are too complicated to be submitted to the rigor of mathematical calculation.

Calculation, Complicated, Logic, Math, Rigor

Nations have always good reasons for being what they are, and the best of all is that they cannot be otherwise.

Good, Nations, Reason, Reasons