Word: emperor
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GOLO MANN, West German historian: Marcus Aurelius, emperor and philosopher, valiant pessimist and warm philanthropist, was good for his own age. In our time, vacillating between two very different types, Franklin Roosevelt and Konrad Adenauer, I choose the former because his achievements had greater significance for world history. His demagoguery was tempered by humanity; he could not hate. He was fearless and had humor, two virtues that Bismarck, too, possessed; he radiated hope and meant well by people, which Bismarck...
ARNOLD TOYNBEE, British historian: Chinese Emperor Kao-Tsu (founder of the Han dynasty in the 2nd century B.C.) and Roman Emperor Augustus each gave to millions unity and peace that lasted because their policies were based on moderation which won consent. Thus they repaired the breakdown of the coercive unity briefly imposed by their unsuccessful predecessors, Shih Wang-ti and Julius Caesar...
...delusion that he was an avenging agent of the Egyptian god Osiris and his father a demonic envoy, Richard stabbed him. By the time Robert Dadd's gory corpse was found in the grass, the young man was on his way to Europe, planning to kill the Emperor of Austria. He was arrested in France, after trying to cut the throat of a stranger in a coach with his "excellent English razor," and shipped back to Britain. Dadd spent the last 40 years of his life in madhouses, dying all but forgotten in Broadmoor...
...addition to running the world's largest country and fathering 56 children with 30 consorts, K'ang-hsi found time to write the equivalent of 16,000 Western printed pages. Official documents, letters, memoranda, verse and private thoughts were collected as the Venerable Record. In Emperor of China, Jonathan Spence, professor of Chinese history at Yale, has pruned and selected this record. In the tradition of Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian, he has created what he calls an "autobiographical biography." But it is more than that. From the Emperor's resplendent portrait on the dust...
...ancient civilization that had occasionally seen Emperors step aside for men they considered worthier than themselves, this Emperor strove to be come a model of excellence. "All the Ancients used to say that the Emperor should concern himself with general principles, but need not deal with the smaller details," he wrote. K'ang-hsi dis agreed: "Failure to attend to details will end up endangering your greater vir tues." It is still excellent advice, for pipe fitters as well as Presidents with an imperial bent...