collected

selected from other authors or sources

No Kings quotes

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How happy we ought to be that we have no kings in America!

—J. Smytthe, Jr, 1853

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      It was the birthday of the Neapolitan King. According to custom, the various vessels in the harbor of Naples were decked in their gayest colors, while the men-of-war fired salutes at sunrise, noon, and sunset. However, this year there was an exception — the vessel of Commodore Morgan, U.S.N., which had recently arrived to the harbor.
      The King sent for the Commodore. “Commodore Morgan, I wish to know if your nation desired that you show to me the disrespect which I observed?”
      “May I ask your Majesty,” said the Commodore, “how I have been wanting in respect towards your Majesty?”
      “It is my birthday, and, of all the vessels in port, yours alone did not deign to fire salutes.”
      “Ah, sir!” replied Morgan, “pardon my republican manners. We have no kings in America, and it is not the custom to fire salutes upon our President’s birthday.”

—The Anecdote of Commodore Morgan, 1853

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America has no king, that is it has no officer to whom wealth and from whom corruption flow. It has no hereditary oligarchy, that is it acknowledges no order of men privileged to cheat and insult the rest of the members of the State.

—Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1820

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America has no king, whose whim could be made into a law.

—Jay William Hudson, 1922

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The extraordinary notion that the President has exclusive control over the use of the army has been in part produced by a vague impression of resemblance between his constitutional prerogative and that of sovereigns under constitutional governments. This impression is begotten partly of pride, partly of fear, and greatly of ignorance. There are some people who take such pride in everything American that they must needs consider their own chief magistrate as mightier than a king. It is not an uncommon thing to hear one of these foolish persons boast that their President has more power than the Queen of England, nay, that he is the greatest magistrate in the world. A false analogy here ministers to pride. Because the President is chief magistrate it is inferred that he is like other chief magistrates, and as these are in general kings, it does not require a great stretch of the imagination to fancy that he also is a sort of king. But an American President is not a king, nor anything like a king, any more than he is like the Emperor of Russia, the Sultan of Turkey, or the Mikado of Japan. The chief magistracy is not of necessity a kingly office. The Governors of our States are chief magistrates also, but they are not little kings.

—David Dudley Field, 1877

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I have a short answer to all this. America has no king!

—Dublin University Magazine, 1834

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The King who comes to his office by virtue of birth, and not of personal qualifications, reigns but does not govern. The republican magistrate does not reign; but it is implied in his position that, within the limits of authority which the law gives him, he should govern. This is implied in the very notion of an elected magistrate. If he is not chosen on account of his capacity for government, why should he be chosen at all?

—The Saturday Review, 1877

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It Should be considered, that there are in America, no Kings, Princes, or Nobles: no Popes, Cardinals, Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, or other ecclesiastical Dignitaries. All publick offices and Employments are bestowed, by the free Choice of the People.

—John Adams, 1780

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The U.S. Constitution was designed to prevent and control berserk actions by a President and by the Executive Branch of government. Presidents are not kings; they have no Divine Right; and when they commit actions that are immoral, or in violation of the Constitution, they must be stopped, or this country will cease to function as a free Constitutional democracy.

—Pete Hamill, 1972

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Every great movement on behalf of humanity leads to organized action. The modern world is learning the enormous value of intelligent and free cooperation; for it is a triumph of the democratic spirit. The people today resolve to do things for themselves. In order to do them, they must combine their energies and their wits, utilize the peculiar power of each individual, and march side by side to the accomplishment of results. Party is simply cooperation. It is not servitude, if the rank and file have brains; for so-called leaders are only servants, if they do but execute the will, and carry out the thought of the people. Presidents are not kings, though entrusted with far more power than most kings possess. There is even no honor in their election, except on the admission that it is an honor to be permitted to serve. The moment a leader sets up to be master instead of servant, let him be promptly dismissed.

—Francis Ellingwood Abbot, 1870

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Here is an attempt to throw something of the mystery of kingship round one who is not a King and who cannot really act as a King. A President chosen for four years cannot really play a King’s part. There is nothing sacred about him. He must submit to praise and blame.

—The Saturday Review, 1877

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The American system is strictly republican. The relations between President and Congress, whatever may be their advantages and disadvantages, follow naturally from the decision of the founders of the Constitution that the executive power should be vested in a single man and not in a council, and that that single man should be, not a king, but a magistrate: elective, terminable, and responsible.

—Edward A. Freeman, 1879

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      We told him we lived in America beneath the flag for which our fathers fought; that we lived in the United States, and we had a right and had a ground to fight on; and we asked the governor to abolish the Baldwin guards. That was the chief thing I was after because I knew when we cleaned them out other things would come with it.
      I called the committee, and I said, “Here, take this document into the governor’s office and present it to him. Now, don’t get on your knees; you don’t need to get on your knees; we have no kings in America; stand on both feet, with your heads erect.”

—Mother Jones, 1912

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In America, our president will not only be without the influencing advantages of the British king, but they will be in the possession of the people at large, to strengthen their hands in the event of a contest with him. In short, danger from ecclesiastical tyranny, that long standing and still remaining curse of the people — that sacrilegious engine of royal power in some countries — can be feared by no man in the United States.

—Tench Coxe, 1788

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The position of the President of the United States one peculiarly well fitted for learning the truth in regard to a political question! Why, sir, palaces are not proverbial for the amount of truth that is uttered in the ears of the king. Indeed, it is probably one of the most repulsive features that surround a man having the kingly office, that from the day of his birth to the day of his death he never hears the honest, simple truth spoken. The President of the United States, it is true, is not a king; but some of the incidents attaching to kings attach to him, and one of those incidents is that he is less likely than almost any other man in the nation to hear the truth spoken. Who are the men that surround him, and what are their purposes and objects? To speak the truth? Oh no, sir. They are men having other purposes and other objects than to tell the truth. They have an eye to fat contracts, to gifts, and emoluments. They do not go there to offend the ear of majesty by speaking the truth, unless it should be pleasant to the ear of majesty to hear it. About the courts of kings, and, I fear, about presidential mansions, there are many who may, without impropriety, be styled toads, who live upon the vapor of the palace. They may have the precious jewel of truth in their heads, but they are specially cautious not to have it on their tongues.

—Lafayette S. Foster, 1858

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NOTE:  Some of these quotations have been edited for clarity and brevity. For the full excerpts and attributions, plus several more “no kings” quotes, please see www.quotegarden.com/no-kings.html

I Prepare to Face Fifty

“I am middle-aged. Fifty is upon me. And I am faced by a grim reaper. But it is not youth I want. It is time. And there’s too little left. What shall I do about it? Shall I waste these remaining years on people who bore me, squander them on employments that satisfy no desires, sacrifice them to the ideas of others? No. I have wasted hours upon hours on nothing but waiting, days upon days on routine that led nowhere, and a tally of weeks on nonsense and so-called diversion.

“I had an idea that in middle age somehow I should reach a hill and beyond it would lie a promised land. Enough merely to be climbing up. Suddenly now I realize the crown of that hill is age fifty. And I know that if there is a promised land it has got to be in front of me. If I don’t find it now I never shall. So I had better face this fifty, acknowledge it is gone — whether squandered or treasured — forever, and plan what to do with this promised land, how to spend these last precious years left to me.

“From the brow of that fifty hill, suddenly I am beginning to compute time. Do I wish to spend so much of it in my remaining years on the pursuit of youthful looks, on this cult of youth? Perhaps I am a miser with my years, but I must confess that I can no longer see value received from pursuing youth. It will bring me no higher price for my work. It will make my husband no fonder; for affection after fifty rests on something other than complexion. It will not add to my emotional satisfaction nor to the pleasures of my mind. No, I shall not waste any of my remaining years on the pursuit of smooth pink cheeks. Nor will I waste my time or worry with weight, counting calories, or other such psychological-gastronomic engagements!

“Frankly, I do not feel the same as I did twenty years ago. Moreover, I do not want to feel the same. These new feelings — may they not be an asset instead of a liability? I will not be satisfied if my remaining years are a mere repetition of those that have gone before. I want something different. I will not spend this time in an effort to produce an illusion to myself. I will be content to look my age, to dress my age, to live my age. I will appreciate all that life has brought me. I will face fifty cheerfully.

“Do not take this to mean that I am negating its challenges. Fifty does not mean freedom from family demands nor from the things that we are tied to by duty. Fifty brings no alchemy that enables one to plan one’s life as one might try an uncharted sea. We will always have personal and financial limitations, and we can only alter our course according to the wheel in our hands, the craft under us, the shoals and currents around us. But what we may do is decide which direction to steer and how to get the maximum of enjoyment in the steering.

“I must be economical of time. Each day must count. I must plan for the satisfaction that is possible here, now. In youth, always before us was that will-o’-the-wisp, perfection, because there was always the hope of time to reach it. That it was always to be to-morrow did not affect our attitude of mind — that of preparing, improving, developing. But gradually it has been made plain to me that this to-morrow will never come, that as I am to-day so shall I be twenty years from now. Yes, I may improve or grow in that time, but it will be along the line already laid out — I shall not change my style, my type, my talk. In the difference between acceptance of this fact and the belief that ‘all things are possible’ lies the difference between thirty and fifty, between youth and middle-age. To those of my contemporaries who still look for the Prince to ride up and disclose a crown beneath his fedora, who still expect pumpkins to turn to coaches, this seems a tragic difference.

“May the acceptance of the truth of fifty bring its own joys. No longer do I need to pretend. I may say things frankly. I can accept myself as middle-aged, and therefore enjoy myself. I can squeeze the utmost out of what I am and what I have. I can relax from the struggle. I shall no longer punish myself. Instead of competing, I can create. I may choose what I like, including the colors that please me — that do something to my brain, if not indeed to my soul — rather than attempting to express the best in taste and fashion. No longer do I need to try to take everything as it comes, but select what I want. And please understand:  I am not retiring — I am attaining.”

—Emily Newell Blair (1877–1951), “I Prepare to Face Fifty,” 1926, abridged

The Poet, II

My body was once a beautiful house of marble,
Kissed to pale rose by the passionate heat of the sun,
Wherein through cunning channels flowed forever
Health-giving crimson blood in steady tides.

My eyes were then quick to see and to welcome beauty,
My lips smiled often with gratified desire,
My hands shook not, but were fit for caress or grapple,
My arms rose and my body moved in strength.

Then not a single line of any poem
Had my hands raped from my brain, but untouched and pure
They abode in the land of distant visions where no man
Heard my voice calling for them at eventide.

My blood lies in great black lakes now, sluggish and frozen,
Or fumes in like some boiling, stinging, poison brew
Till it suddenly stops in a lassitude unspoken,
Or bursts through my pores and covers me with red dew:

My eyes are bleared now and dull with sleepless midnights,
My lips are shrunken purses—their gold is spent,
My hands unsteadily clutch and paw and tremble,
My arms are as strings of macaroni bent.

And as for my chest, ’tis like a leaky air-box
Fixed to some cheap melodeon out of tune,
The bellows creak, the loose and brown keys rattle,
And the music that comes is like a dog’s sick moan.

But in my brain there seethes an adulterous hotchpotch
Of poems clean and disgusting, mad and sage;
And pain, like a dry fire, keeps them ever a-boiling
Till they splash over and blacken some wasted page.

Yes, I am a poet now to be mocked and applauded,
A turnspit that turns and must never taste the meat:
Behold how great I am, but I wait for a greater,
Even Death, who will silence the march of these crippled feet.

—John Gould Fletcher (1886–1950), “The Poet, II,” Fire and Wine, 1913

How fares it?

Thigh-bone said to breast-bone:
      “How fares it, dead,
now heart’s soft hammer
      is silencèd?
How fares it, brother,
      when the only sound
is slow roots thrusting
      into the ground?”
Breast-bone said to thigh-bone:
      “How fares it, friend,
with no errands to run,
      no knee to bend?
How fares it ghost, now
      the only stir
is of quiet becoming
      quieter?”
Thigh-bone and breast-bone
      said to skull:
“What of dead Plato
      and the Greek trull?
How fares it, emblem
      of death, set free
from wisdom and lust’s
      infirmity?”…

—Humbert Wolfe (1885–1940), from “A Conversation,” 1932

Inflame them to madness

“Whosoever contributes, especially with success, to enlarge the Understandings of Men, and to mend their Hearts, is entitled to the Friendship and Protection of the Governors of Men, I mean of such as would truly answer the noble end of Government; who, if they pursue their duty, and consult the honour and improvement of human nature, will chearfully and generously promote whatever has that good tendency. And they who practice different Politics, by cramping the human Soul, possessing it with false awe, and debasing it through Darkness and Ignorance, do not deserve, but rather disgrace and forfeit, the glorious and endearing title of Magistrates and Protectors.

“True and extensive Knowledge never was, never can be, hurtful to the Peace of Society. It is Ignorance, or, which is worse than ignorance, false Knowledge, that is chiefly terrible to States. They are the furious, the ill taught, the blind and misguided, that are prone to be seized with groundless Fears, and unprovoked Resentment, to be roused by Incendiaries, and to rush desperately into Sedition and acts of Rage.

“Subjects that are most knowing and best informed, are ever most peaceable and loyal. Whereas the Loyalty and obedience of such, whose understandings extend not beyond Names and Sounds, will be always precarious, and can never be thoroughly relied upon, whilst any turbulent or artful men can, by dinn and clamour, and the continual application of those Sounds, intoxicate, and inflame them even to madness, can make them believe themselves undone though nothing hurts them, think they are oppressed when they are best protected, and can drive them into riots and rebellion, without the excuse of one real grievance. It will always be easy to raise a mist before eyes that are already dark: and it is a true observation, ‘that it is an easy work to govern Wise Men; but to govern Fools or Madmen, is a continual slavery.’

“It is from the blind zeal and stupidity cleaving to Superstition, ’tis from the Ignorance, Rashness, and Rage attending Faction, that so many, so mad, and so sanguinary evils have afflicted and destroyed Men, dissolved the best Governments, and thinned the greatest Nations. And as a people well instructed will certainly esteem the Blessings which they enjoy, and study public Peace, for their own sake, there is a great merit in instructing the people, and in cultivating their Understandings. They are certainly less credulous in proportion as they are more knowing, and consequently less liable to be the Dupes of Demagogues, and the property of Ambition. They are not then to be surprized with false cries, nor animated by imaginary Danger; and wherever the Understanding is well principled and informed, the Passions will be tame, and the Heart well disposed.

“They therefore who communicate true Knowledge to their species, are true Friends to the World, Benefactors to Society, and deserve all encouragement from those, who preside over Society, with the applause and good wishes of all men.”

—Pierre Des Maizeaux (1673–1745), Dedication, The Dictionary Historical and Critical of Mr Peter Bayle, Second English Edition, Volume the First, 1734

Confessions of a Worrier

“If any man or woman knows more about worrying than I do, that man or woman is sincerely to be pitied. To begin with, I come of honorable generations of worriers, all of whom seemed to be deeply sensible of their responsibility for the carrying on of a world which they did not create. My grandfather used to worry about the weather and crops. My mother worried with an elaboration and finish which really lent distinction to her performance. She could worry harder and longer on less provocation than anybody else I ever knew. When it became my turn to take up the burden of the universe I was quite as successful as she.

“As a child, I worried about the end of the world, and the Unpardonable Sin, which I knew I had committed, if I could only find out what it was. I worried my way through school and into college, where my course in worry was so complete that I came out with nervous prostration and two deep furrows between my eyebrows which I shall wear, like the scars of battle they really are, to my dying day. And then I worried about the furrows!

“I began to see the light through reading Menticulture by Horace Fletcher which put a vague old Buddhist doctrine into a modern, concrete formula — ‘Anger and worry are bad habits of the mind. They are not necessary ingredients.’ Worry not necessary! I had always supposed it was as much my business to worry as it was to breathe, and I looked upon people who did not worry as the shirks and cowards of creation, who were easy in their minds simply because they were criminally indifferent to their duties.”

—Mary Boardman Page, “The Confessions of a Worrier,” 1899, a little altered

Literary LOL

This tweet from a guy named Ben had me laughing harder than I have in a long while. —

Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” has perhaps the most memorable opening line in all of Western literature:

“I hope you motherfuckers like reading about whales”

—Ben, @pixelatedboat, 2018 August 12, onegianthand.com

2018 August 21

Ex Libris R. Le G.

“…multum ille et terris jactatus et alto
Vi superum, saevae memorem Junonis ob iram,
Multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem
Inferretque deos Latio:…” —Virgil, The Aeneid

Having no home, what should I do with these,
Tossed as I am about the sounding seas,
Sport of exiling winds of change and chance—
Feet in America, and heart in France.
Homeless, ’tis meet I find my books a home:
Coffined in crates and cases long they lay,
Distant from me three thousand miles of foam
Dungeoned in cellars cold and nailed away,
As in a sepulchre, till Judgment Day.
Lost to their gentle uses in the tomb,
Cobwebbed companions of the spidered gloom,
At last they rise again to live once more,—
Dread resurrection of the auction room.

Books I have loved so well, my love so true
Tells me ’tis time that I should part from you,
No longer, selfish, hoard and use you not,
Nor leave you in the unlettered dark to rot,
But into alien keeping you resign—
Hands that love books, fear not, no less than mine.

Thus shall you live upon warm shelves again,
And ‘neath an evening lamp your pages glow,
Others shall press ‘twixt leaf and leaf soft flowers,
As I was wont to press them long ago;
And blessings be upon the eyes that rain
A tear upon my flowers—I mean on “ours”—
If haply here and there kind eyes shall find
Some sad old flower that I have left behind.

—Richard Le Gallienne, “Ex Libris R. Le G.,” May 1905