"Don't appear so scholarly, pray. Humanize your talk, and speak to be understood"
About this Quote
Moliere is needling a very specific type: the person who uses “scholarly” as a costume. “Don’t appear so scholarly, pray” isn’t anti-intellectual so much as anti-performance, a jab at learnedness deployed as social leverage. The verb “appear” does the real work here. It suggests that the problem isn’t knowledge, but the theatrical display of it - the self-conscious flourish of jargon, citations, and ornate reasoning meant to intimidate or impress rather than connect.
“Humanize your talk” is a sly reversal. The supposedly elevated speaker is being told they sound less human, less in touch with ordinary sense and feeling. In Moliere’s comic universe, that’s not just a stylistic failure; it’s a moral one. His plays regularly skewer doctors, aristocrats, and pedants who hide behind specialized language to launder vanity into authority. The subtext: if your speech can’t survive contact with regular people, it may not be as wise as you think.
“Speak to be understood” lands like a manifesto for comedy itself. Moliere wrote for an audience that included the court and the city, and his genius was making social critique legible at multiple levels. This line doubles as a directive to characters and a wink to the crowd: clarity is democratic, obfuscation is a power move. It’s also a reminder that communication is an ethical choice. You can talk to prove you’re smart, or talk to make something true between people. Moliere is voting, sharply, for the latter.
“Humanize your talk” is a sly reversal. The supposedly elevated speaker is being told they sound less human, less in touch with ordinary sense and feeling. In Moliere’s comic universe, that’s not just a stylistic failure; it’s a moral one. His plays regularly skewer doctors, aristocrats, and pedants who hide behind specialized language to launder vanity into authority. The subtext: if your speech can’t survive contact with regular people, it may not be as wise as you think.
“Speak to be understood” lands like a manifesto for comedy itself. Moliere wrote for an audience that included the court and the city, and his genius was making social critique legible at multiple levels. This line doubles as a directive to characters and a wink to the crowd: clarity is democratic, obfuscation is a power move. It’s also a reminder that communication is an ethical choice. You can talk to prove you’re smart, or talk to make something true between people. Moliere is voting, sharply, for the latter.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teaching |
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