Headright

“ You have this day to declare yourself head of a nation. ‘And now, O Lord, my God, thou hast made thy servant ruler over the people. Give unto him an understanding heart, that he may know how to go out and come in before this great people; that he may discern between good and bad. ”

“ Each student should bring to the class a statement of what he regards as the chief thought in each paper as it comes up,—not the moral of the paper, but the chief end which the writer seems to have in view, the thought which most strongly strikes the reader. ”

“ As far back as I can remember, I find that my dominant faculty, the one that has been present in every crisis of my life, great or small, and which is present to-day, has been the faculty, I mean the power and the need of duplication. There have always been in me, as it were, two distinct persons; one who went, came, acted, felt, and another who looked at the first go, come, act, and feel with an impassable curiosity. ”

“ Chief, the charm of thy reflecting, Is the moral that it brings; Nature, with the mind connecting, Gives the artist's fancy wings. Soul, sublime 'mid human débris, Paints the limner's work, I ween, Art and Science, all unweary, Lighting up this mortal dream. ”

“ Every society has it chief; and I was about to observe that every circle has it centre, which certainly would have been true enough, but the comparison is of no use to me, as our circle had two centres, or, to follow up the first idea, had two chiefs—the chief schoolmaster and the chief domestic—the chief masculine and the chief feminine—the chief with the ferula, and the chief with the brimstone and treacle—the master and the matron, each of whom had their appendages—the one in the usher, the other in the assistant housemaid. ”

“ In his moments of fatherly instruction the chief will smooth a surface with his hand, and on it trace with his fingers a mystic line—I think it must always be a continuous and unbroken line—which expresses some secret of human existence. ”

“ But when one has acquired a knowledge of the chief ends,—when one knows what is the chief good and the chief evil,—then a proper path of life, and a proper regulation of all the duties of life, is found out. ”

“ The up-looking one I call ‘The Statesman,’ quite ready to be called to the Helm of Affairs: the Down-looking one I call The Philosopher. Will you take which you like? And when next old Spedding comes your way, give him the other (he won’t care which) with my Love. ”

“ The great orator, statesman, historian, lawyer, judge,—counsellor, companion and ancestor of monarchs,— flying for his life, in his old age, into a foreign land, from the court of which, for a generation, he had been the ornament and head, soon as his feet touch a place of safety, thinks of his University. ”

“ Into the world so beautifully valid the master would occasionally walk, inquiring as to what I had done or would do, but bearing on the question with an easy lightness, a friendliness of tact, a neglect of conclusion, which it touches me still to remember. ”

“ Your speech is simple, my Master, but not theirs who talk of you. ”

“ The Ruler, after our idea of him, in his estimate of mankind looks beyond that which they are in the actual world, to that which they are in the Divine Idea—to that which therefore they may be, ought to be, and one day assuredly will be ”

“ Such is the law of all intelligence. “The rapt seraph that adores and burns,” the chief of the hierarchy of Heaven, the moment he deems himself sufficient for his own support, by that one act of impious self-idolatry, falls, headlong, from his high estate. ”

“ Amid the brilliant distinctions of office, and even in mature age, he will restlessly strive and labour to master the Idea, never resigning the hope of becoming greater than he now is, so long as strength permits him to indulge it. ”

“ In any case, there are those of us who in the vortical change of the social order through which we are whirling, feel a desire to orient ourselves through an objective interest in letters among the embattled purposes and policies which are now gripped in a final test of strength. ”

“ To the household and retainers of the chief she is less interesting than the ancestor from whom the chief derives his divine lineage, or the deeds of martial prowess in which he and his immediate following take pride. The epic rhapsodist may, indeed, clothe his heroes in the dress of Nature's godship, but the personality of his chief shines through. ”

“ He who can not look upon human affairs with this unfettered vision is never a Ruler, whatever station he may occupy,—nor can he ever become one. Even his mode of thought, his faith in the unchangeableness of the present, places him in a state of subordination, makes him an instrument of him who created that arrangement of things in the permanence of which he believes. ”

“ For, if it be reasonable to suppose and talk of faculties as distinct beings that can act, (as we do, when we say the will orders, and the will is free,) it is fit that we should make a speaking faculty, and a walking faculty, and a dancing faculty, by which these actions are produced, which are but several modes of motion; as well as we make the will and understanding to be faculties, by which the actions of choosing and perceiving are produced, which are but several modes of thinking. ”

“ The relation seemed very pleasant between them; the only superiority—that of superior knowledge—was sufficient to maintain authority,—all the authority that was needed to keep daily life in good order. ”

“ These three classes are the principals, the agents, and the operatives. The principals are in the thought of ends. They have the direction, decide what shall be done, and set the others to doing it. Thus they represent the head, and afford an illustration of the third or highest heaven whose denizens are in ends, or in the thought of ends. The agents are in the thought of means or causes. They know how the intention of the principals is to be executed. ”

“ The uncommon, the sublime, must seem and be Like things of every day. But in the field, Ay, there the Present Being makes itself felt. The personal must command, the actual eye Examine. If to be the chieftain asks All that is great in nature, let it be Likewise his privilege to move and act In all the correspondences of greatness. The oracle within him, that which lives, He must invoke and question—not dead books, Not ordinances, not mould-rotted papers. ”

“ When the master is bright and cheerful, the servant, reflecting its master's look, is brisk and alert, also,—ready to do cheerily it's lord's will and pleasure, when the master is dull, the servant is heavy and languid, too. ”

“ It is from them that each species of eloquence has been derived; the rules contained in them are equally applicable to the practice of the senate, the bar, or the pulpit; they are equally fit for the many or the few; they teach how to reason as well as how to move, and to affect the head, as well as to touch the heart. ”

“ So the one office that is set forth here is the old familiar one, the obligation of which is fully recognised by us all, and pitifully ill-discharged by any of us, to shine by our daily life, and to shine by the actual communication by speech of 'the Name that is above every name.' That is the ideal ”

“ All orders are delivered to the Head Boy, a most important and dignified personage, and he transmits them through the various ranks of his underlings until they reach the servant whose duty it is to carry them out. ”

“ My master had power and law on his side; I had a determined will. There is might in each. ”

“ This very effective form of the leader takes its name from the fact that it cuts in, or is inserted into, the midst of a scene. That the cut-in leader may tell all that is necessary much better than could a long statement of what is going on is evident because the direct words of a character are more effective than the same ideas expressed in the third person. ”

“ They bore themselves with the air of leaderships; they had the port of philosophers, noblemen and kings. The writings of our earliest times are full of reference to the majesty of their looks, the awe inspired by their presence, the grandeur and power of their words. ”

“ It is the custom amongst the Kayans and Kenyahs that, before the people can go out of mourning for a chief or for one of a chief’s near relations, either a new head must be taken or an old one, or some portion of one must be obtained. ”

“ The servant in many cases knew his master and his master's interests as well as the master himself, or even better, and must act by the light of his own knowledge in cases where his master was ignorant or misinformed. ”

“ They have, in pursuance of their Theory, mapped out the human scull into compartments, to each of which they have assigned a particular faculty or sentiment, and they profess to tell, with some degree of accuracy, the individual character by the peculiar formation of the head. ”

“ That is right, but, unlike the cupola of a common house, which is used but little, the head is the best room of all, and the others would be of little worth without it. It is here we find the master, the one who gives orders to his servants, the muscles, and directs all they do. ”

“ It is expressed in the first mode by those who, as the highest free Leaders of men, originally guide and order their affairs:—their relations with each other, or the legal condition,—and their relation to passive nature, or the dominion of reason over the irrational world;—who possess the right and calling, either by themselves or in concert with others, to think, judge, and resolve independently concerning the actual arrangement of these relations. ”

“ In the next Branch may be ranked those Letters, which have past between Men of Eminence in the Republic of Literature. Many of these are in high Estimation in the learned World, in which they are considered as having equal Authority to that, which the political World allows to those of the first Class. ”

“ And it is so blessed to realize that now we are not without a Master, a Leader, a Head. We were intended to be followers. We always do follow; but, alas! We did not follow the right Master. Now the right Master has found us, and instead of following our own foolish lead, we want to follow His wise lead. ”

“ The acts of the chief were imitated, every man seeming to strive to outdo his fellows in the contortions of their countenances, the protrusion of their tongues, and the way in which they rolled and displayed the whites of their eyes. ”

“ Originally, the chief is the father, the patriarch, the elder; in other words, the good and wise man, whose functions, consequently, are exclusively of a reflective and intellectual nature. The human race—like all other races of sociable animals—has its instincts, its innate faculties, its general ideas, and its categories of sentiment and reason. ”

“ All eyes are turned anxiously to the door from which the Sub-Prefect himself and the other representatives of the majesty of the law are expected to issue and pay their homage to the hero of the hour. ”

“ Jeer not at any person, whatever.
Always give the right hand to your superiors, (by superiors, I do not mean so much [Pg 32] in regard to birth, as age, merit, and the light in which they are regarded by the world,) when you either meet or walk with them; and mind also to give them the wall, in meeting or walking with them; for that is the upper hand, though in walking your superior should then be at your left hand. ”

“ Chief of the Bearings, go up on to the Hill of Speech, and speak to the folk out of thy wisdom, and let them know that to-morrow early before the sun-rising those that may, and are not bound by the Gods against it, shall do deeds according to their might, and win rest for themselves, and new days of deeds for the kindreds. ”

“ But in all imagery of a kingdom, of war, of judgment, the idea of the king, the leader, the judge, would naturally be the strongest point of imaginative action, the center of crystalizing association around which congruous particulars would be drawn until the picture was complete. ”

“ The familiar position of his master, leaning on his shoulder, is a further proof of his esteem, declaring that he dwells, as it were, in his bosom, and possesses the utmost share of his affection; circumstances that must sweeten even a state of servitude, and make a pleasant and lasting impression on the mind. ”

“ Our chief want in life, is, somebody who shall make us do what we can. ”

“ Suppose the servant really killed the master, or suppose the master isn't really dead, or suppose the master is dressed up as the servant, or suppose the servant is buried for the master; invent what Wilkie Collins' tragedy you like, and you still have not explained a candle without a candlestick, or why an elderly gentleman of good family should habitually spill snuff on the piano. ”

“ Taking less eras of history than some of the great men who had illustrated them, he thought how such characters would be sure to interest one whose views of life were eminently practical, and so a great law-giver, a legislator, a great general, or orator, was each evening selected for their reading. ”