Daily Inspiration Quote by Jean Racine

A neat little knife of a line: it flatters hierarchy while pretending to be practical. Racine writes in the airless, status-obsessed world of Louis XIV, where court life runs on calibration - not sincerity. "According as the man is" sounds descriptive, almost anthropological, but it smuggles in a social commandment: adjust your behavior to the other person's rank, temperament, and vanity. "Humour him" is the tell. It doesn't mean entertain; it means indulge, placate, manage. The phrase turns interpersonal relations into stagecraft, and that is pure Racine: human feeling as something pressured by power until it becomes performance.

The intent is double-edged. On the surface, it offers a survival tip in a world where misreading someone can cost you patronage, reputation, even safety. Underneath, it exposes how little "character" matters when the rules are written by authority. You don't meet a person; you meet the version of them your position requires you to tolerate. The self becomes a set of responses, tailored to whoever holds leverage.

Placed in Racine's theater - packed with princes, confidants, and rivals speaking in the refined violence of classicism - the line functions like a stage direction for real life. It acknowledges that politics is psychology with consequences. The cynical brilliance is that it reads like common sense while quietly admitting an ugly truth: in certain systems, honesty is not a virtue, it's a liability.