T's [King James Bible] subject is majesty, not tyranny, and it's political purpose was unifying and enfolding, to elide the kingliness of God with the godliness of kings, to make royal power and divine glory into one invisible garment which could be wrapped around the nation as a whole.
They do not abuse the king that flatter him. For flattery is the bellows blows up sin; The thing the which is flattered, but a spark To which that blast gives heat and stronger glowing.
We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked, but not comprised. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed. And should European statesmen address us in the words which were used of old — “Shall I speak for thee to the King or the Captain of the host?” — we should reply with the Shunamite woman: “Nay, Sir, for we dwell among our own people.”
. .we would have to say that hereditary succession is harmful. You may say the king, having sovereign power, will not in that case hand over to his children. But it is hard to believe that: it is a difficult achievement, which expects too much virtue of human nature.
If princes and kings could follow it (Tao), all things would by themselves abide, Heaven and Earth would unite and sweet dew would fall. People would by themselves find harmony, without being commanded.
"I'm the greatest thing that ever lived! I'm the king of the world! I'm a bad man. I'm the prettiest thing that ever lived. I shook up the world! I want justice..."
The king is but a man, as I am; the violet smells to him as it doth to me; the element shows to him as it doth to me; all his senses have but human conditions; his ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing.
The power of Kings and Magistrates is nothing else, but what is only derivative, transferrd and committed to them in trust from the People, to the Common good of them all, in whom the power yet remaines fundamentally, and cannot be takn from them, without a violation of thir natural birthright.
Shivaji was the greatest Hindu king that India had produced within the last thousand years; one who was the very incarnation of lord Siva, about whom prophecies were given out long before he was born; and his advent was eagerly expected by all the great souls and saints of Maharashtra as the deliverer of the Hindus from the hands of the Mlecchas, and as one who succeeded in the reestablishment of Dharma which had been trampled underfoot by the depredations of the devastating hordes of the Moghals
For me, Lincoln is like just a handful of people - a Gandhi, or a Picasso, or a Martin Luther King Jr. - who is an original and captures something essential.
Take Jesus for your king, and by baptism swear allegiance to him; take him for your prophet, and hear him; take him for your priest, to make atonement for you.