Daily Inspiration Quote by Saint Francis de Sales

A good discourse, Saint Francis de Sales argues, should have the tautness of living tissue: trim it and you do not just lose ornament, you draw blood. The line borrows its force from a visceral image - “the quick” is the tender, alive part under the nail - turning editing into an ethical act. For a cleric steeped in pastoral duty, speech isn’t a performance; it’s a form of care. You don’t pad care. You don’t gild instruction. Every extra flourish risks becoming vanity, distraction, even a small betrayal of the listener’s attention.

The specific intent is bracingly practical. De Sales, famous for accessible spiritual counsel in an age of doctrinal conflict, is policing the boundary between persuasion and indulgence. In the post-Reformation Catholic world, words were not neutral; they were instruments that could console, convert, or inflame. His ideal “discourse” isn’t merely concise; it’s irreducible, where each sentence earns its place because it carries spiritual and moral weight.

The subtext is a quiet rebuke of rhetorical luxuriance - the kind that makes the speaker feel brilliant while leaving the audience unchanged. By defining excellence as what cannot be removed, de Sales anticipates the modern instinct that clarity is a form of respect. Tightness here isn’t austerity for its own sake; it’s discipline in service of truth, the belief that language should be lean enough to reach the conscience without detouring through the ego.