Quotes regarding Grigory Rasputin
“It is hard to live with all these wrongful accusations. God, they write horrible things! Give me patience and seal the lips of the enemies! Or grant me Your help and the eternal happiness of Your bliss”
Grigory Rasputin
“He is hated because we love him”
Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra on Rasputin
“If it hadn’t been Rasputin, the opponents of the royal family and the orchestrators of the revolution would have created him from Vyrubova, and if it hadn’t been from Vyrubova, from me, from whomever you want”
Saint Eugene Botkin
“He lives for his sovereign and Russia, and bears all slanders for our sakes.”
Tsarina Saint Alexandra on Rasputin
“What comparison can there be with the Pascha of Orthodoxy? Oh, we are happy, we Orthodox! No faith compares to Orthodoxy…when the bells begin to ring and you enter the temple, then you praise Pascha even with your limbs, even objects turn bright in your eyes!”
Grigory Rasputin
“Among us is the most worthy to be the first to receive the Holy Mysteries. Here he is, a modest pilgrim standing among you!”
Saint John of Kronstadt on Rasputin
“I realised that the fearful things attributed to Rasputin were, in many cases, the actual doings of his accusers. Perhaps no man in history has been so furiously calumniated”
Gerard Shelley on Rasputin (The Speckled Domes)
“Grigory is holy and a great Martyr before the Lord. His icons are needed; people have prayed before them, are praying, and will pray, and weep, as I do, weeping and praying before this image.”
Elder Nikolay Guryanov
“I have been studying occultism for a long time and I can assure you people like Rasputin with such power come along once in several centuries… No one can replace Rasputin, thus his elimination will have positive consequences for the revolution”
Prince Felix Yusupov, Rasputin’s killer
“Do not strive for honors, just follow and search for God and everyone will listen to you”
Grigory Rasputin
“Although Rasputin is constantly accused of debauchery, it seems strange that when I started my role in the commission of inquiry, there was not a single woman in St. Petersburg, or in Russia, who would make accusations against him.”
Anna Vyrubova
“Even after his murder, Gregory would appear to Alexei in dreams and comfort him. The link between the two was very close indeed.”
Father Andrew Phillips
“Some of Gregory’s visitors were sincere and deserving; others were intriguers and crooks.”
Father Andrew Phillips
“Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich was striving for supreme power. One obstacle in his path was Rasputin’s influence over the Tsar. According to Nikolai Nikolayevich, Rasputin had to be discredited by any means necessary.”
Oleg Platonov on the Freemason GD Nikolai Nikolayevich
“Among us lives a man who voluntarily took upon himself all our burdens and bears them responsibly before God, giving himself completely to Him. From the people for whom he constantly sacrifices himself, he receives only ridicule, misunderstanding, coldness, ingratitude, and malice! Slander has always pursued him and will continue to pursue him, because this is his feat and because true servants of God have always been despised, persecuted, judged, and condemned!”
Maria Golovina on Rasputin
“One should not think that the Tsar and Tsarina were naive, deluded people… They repeatedly conducted checks on the accuracy of the information they received about [Rasputin] and each time were convinced that everything said about him was fiction and slander.”
Oleg Platonov
“I am a man — a brother sent to you and devoted to God.”
Grigory Rasputin
“Killing Rasputin was a deeply monarchist act.”
Vasily Shulgin, subversive politician and revolutionary who enforced the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II.
In 1913, Shulgin also supported Menahem Mendel Beilis, the Jewish man put on trial for the ritual murder of 12-year-old Andrei Yushchinsky. He accused the prosecutors of “anti semitism,” for which he later received several letters from grateful Jews. Shulgin was honored in 2013 by the Russian-Jewish magazine “L’chaim” for his efforts to protect the Jewish people from the “Tsarist autocracy.”
“I pray to God for the strengthening of your spiritual and physical health.”
Russian wrestler Ivan Zaikin to Rasputin after the 1914 assassination attempt
“I suffered all kinds of mockery. I plowed diligently and slept little, yet in my heart I kept wondering how I might discover the way people find salvation.”
Grigory Rasputin
“A myth about Rasputin was created — a myth intended to defile and discredit Russia’s peasant spiritual national origins, which Rasputin in a certain sense embodied.”
Russian historian Oleg Platonov
“Rasputin’s murderer (Felix Yusupov) could not pass a single exam [at Oxford]”
C.S. Lewis
“Grigory Efimovich never harbored malice toward his opponents. He prayed for them all.”
Yuri Rassulin
“[The Tsarina’s] agonized features betrayed, in spite of all her efforts, how terribly she was suffering. Her grief was inconsolable… He alone who could save her son had been slain.”
Pierre Gilliard, Alexei’s tutor, after the murder of Rasputin
“Where are there not martyrs for Christ? All crowns were begotten through blood.”
Grigory Rasputin
“These people will ruin Russia. They hate the Russian peasants like cattle. They are not Russians. They speak our tongue and cross themselves in the Orthodox way, but their hearts are foreign.”
Grigory Rasputin on the decadent aristocrats of Russia
“Those who slander [Rasputin] are not real Christians”
Elder Nikolay Guryanov
“What can be said other than that it would be better for [the Turks] to have a single spirit, and a single Orthodox church, together with us.”
Grigory Rasputin
“[Theophan (Bystrov)] accused Grigory Rasputin of indecent behavior after a woman’s confession. Here, Bishop Theophan demonstrated his spiritual inexperience by taking the woman’s word for it, which later turned out to be a fabrication.”
Hegumen Seraphim (Kuznetsov)
“Don’t you recognize that Her Majesty and I are people of faith? How, then, could we possibly allow near ourselves a person such as the one you depict Rasputin to be? After all, we are not children.”
Tsar Nicholas II to Alexander Samarin, Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod
“From every sacred place one gleans a priceless pearl of humility”
Grigory Rasputin
“Sacred places offer the experience of life, and are the true fount of wisdom”
Grigory Rasputin
“God help them”
Elder Nikolay Guryanov on those who slander Rasputin
“Alexei Nikolaevich burst into tears hiding his head in his arms. Then he turned around and yelled in a rage: ‘Papa, won’t you punish them properly? Stolypin’s murderer was hanged!’”
Alexei finding out about the murder of Grigory Rasputin (memoirs of Anna Vyrubova)
“Out in the courtyard, [Rasputin] kept a lodging with icons as a shelter for pilgrims passing through Pokrovskoe.”
Douglas Smith
“God is life’s consolation”
Grigory Rasputin
“My father would often take us on his knees, my brother Mitia, my sister Varvara, and myself. He would tell us wonderful stories with that tenderness he always showed and that absent look in which seemed to be mirrored the countries he had visited and the strange adventures he had met with on the road.”
Maria Rasputina on her father Grigory
“He could speak freely about Holy Scripture and the meaning of God in a way unlike the priests with their book learning. His language was direct, personal, unmistakably alive, and earthy, filled with references to daily life and the beauty of the natural world”
Douglas Smith on Rasputin
“When I started doing pilgrimages, I began to experience pleasure from being in a different world.”
Grigory Rasputin
“In the person of Rasputin I see the entire Russian people – beaten and executed, yet still preserving their faith, even when it means death. And with this faith they shall be victorious.”
Father Dmitry Dudko
“Poor Russia bears a penance. It is our duty to cleanse the memory of the Elder from slander. This is vital for the spiritual life of the whole Russian Church. As Divine Truth begins to be revealed, everything will change in Russia.”
Elder Nikolay Guryanov on Rasputin
“God has seen your tears and heard your prayers”
Grigory Rasputin
“Earthly servants trod upon and cursed the labors of this righteous man and made him an object of ridicule, but the heavens were adorned by his patience.”
Grigory Rasputin on Saint Theodore the Studite
“There was a Saint, Grigory Efimovich, but he was killed.”
Tsarevich Saint Alexei
“The Lord God will save His faithful servant”
Bishop Varnava of Tobolsk after the attempt on Rasputin’s life in 1914.
Bishop Varnava would later on be crucial in achieving the canonization of Saint John of Tobolsk, together with Patriarch Saint Tikhon and Tsar Saint Nicholas II.
“I stand by this tomb in order that I may bear witness to the source of Russia’s greatness and the defender of the holy Orthodox Church. I fight for the Tsar, the Faith and Fatherland. While I am alive no harm shall ruin them, but if I perish, so shall they!”
Grigory Rasputin
“Rasputin wished to rid Russia of the Jews, whom he considered to be the enemies of the Russian throne and religion, the plotters of revolution.”
Gerard Shelley
“Each of her daughters (the Romanov sisters) wore around her neck an amulet bearing Rasputin’s picture and a prayer by the peasant holy man.”
Robert K. Massie describing the Romanovs at the time of their murder
“[Rasputin] was a most sincere Christian. He had the highest moral standards, combined with a kindly nature. These qualities never left him to the day of his tragic death.”
Dr. Elizabeth Judas
“Tsarevich Alexey would have been dead within a very few years if Rasputin’s genius had been lacking.”
Dr. Elizabeth Judas
“Why, having killed a man whom they regarded as a menace to the country, had they not admitted their action before everyone… instead of trying to hide all trace of the murder by burying the body under the ice?”
Pyotr Wrangel on Rasputin’s murderers
“If I say that I never saw the evil side of Gregory Rasputin I shall be
called a liar or a fool—perhaps, more chivalrously, the latter.
It is, however, the truth when I say that we never saw the evil side of him.”
Madame Lili Dehn, The Real Tsaritza
“When I had anxiety, doubts, unpleasantness, it was enough to speak five minutes with Grigory, so that at that time I could feel strengthened and pacified. He was always capable of telling me that which I needed to hear.”
Tsar Saint Nicholas II
Once a woman came to Rasputin’s apartment. “Dad approached her and said: “Just give me what you are holding in your right hand. I know what it is.” The lady took her hand out of her sleeve and handed him a revolver.
Varvara, Rasputin’s daughter
“Do not take it unkindly. I will do no harm to you and if I have fallen in your eyes, then pray, pray for Grigory and let the Jews criticize me if they wish”
Grigory Rasputin to Metropolitan Antony (Khrapovitsky)
When I started my pilgrimage to holy places, I found joy in the other world. I attended many places, suffered a lot and saw people serving God. I realized that peasants are also a part of this for even the Tsar uses the results of their work. All birds and even mice use the peasants’ labor. With each breath we praise God and all our prayers to Him are for peasants – just do not let them swear! Peasants are great in front of God. They do not attend balls or theatres but they understand one thing – God ordered them to work hard. A peasant has a scythe in his hand and a plow in his heart. Instead of luxury clothes he has something simple on, instead of three fast horses – just a weary little horse. He rides along and prays to God to take him to his land or to town. That’s where the Christ is with him!
Grigory Rasputin on peasants
“What can I say with my humble human mind about the wonderful Hagia Sophia, the first in the whole world. As a cloud on a mountain it is the first in the whole world… Lord, hear our prayers and return the cathedral to us”
Grigory Rasputin
“I had to suffer through grief and bad luck during my pilgrimage. Evil people planned to kill me and chased me but God saved me each time. Many lies were told against me”
Grigory Rasputin
“There is truly no one more talented than a Russian muzhik. What an original interesting personality! Rasputin is an honest and kind person always willing to do good and eagerly giving his money away to those who need it”
Count Sergei Witte
“This is a servant of God, you will sin if you even mentally condemn him”
Saint Hermogenes (Dolganyov) on Rasputin
“When I saw him I felt that gentleness and warmth radiated from him. All the children seemed to like him. They were completely at their ease with him”
Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna on Rasputin
“While Rasputin is alive, we cannot win”
Vladimir Purishkevich, anti-Tsarist politician attempting to overthrow the Tsar
“I felt how happy our people were and I would like our faith not to be degraded. It blooms for the righteous, let's name just one – John of Krondstadt and there are thousands of others.”
Grigory Rasputin
“Humbleness and love – only they bring true joy! Love is vital. When there are no more prophesies and no new knowledge, love will still be there.”
Grigory Rasputin