Life & Wisdom Quote by Robert Herrick

A king who skins his sheep doesn’t just take too much; he destroys the very source of his wealth. Herrick’s couplet lands because it compresses political economy into a barnyard image that’s almost insultingly obvious, the kind of “how could you miss this?” clarity that makes overreach look stupid rather than merely immoral. Shearing is routine, cyclical, sustainable. Skinning is a panic move or a cruelty flex: a ruler cashing out today by guaranteeing tomorrow’s ruin.

Herrick writes as a 17th-century poet steeped in a world where monarchy is both sacred theater and fiscal machine. England had recently lived through the anxieties of taxation, monopolies, and royal prerogative under the Stuarts, with the social memory of governmental extraction never far from the surface. The line reads like counsel a court poet can safely offer: it doesn’t preach revolution, it preaches competence. “Moderation” is framed as self-interest, not sentiment.

The subtext is sharper than the pastoral tone suggests. Calling subjects “sheep” flatters neither side: the people are positioned as managed, not consulted; the king is a shepherd who can turn butcher. Yet Herrick’s real target is the ruler’s temptation to mistake possession for entitlement. Good governance here is not kindness; it’s restraint disciplined by long horizons. The wit is that it sounds like moral advice, but it’s really a warning: exploitative power is bad accounting.