Daily Inspiration Quote by Francois Fenelon

Good taste, for Fenelon, isnt a matter of ornament; its a discipline of the self. He makes style sound like ethics: say much in few words, select your thoughts, arrange them, keep your composure. Thats not just advice for elegant conversation. Its a blueprint for how a person should govern their inner life and, by extension, their public presence.

The intent is quietly prescriptive. Fenelon was a cleric and court educator in an age when speech could elevate you or ruin you, and when rhetoric was both spiritual tool and political weapon. Brevity here isnt modern minimalism; its suspicion of verbal excess, the kind that signals vanity, passion, or manipulation. "Choosing among our thoughts" implies that not every impulse deserves daylight. In a Christian moral frame, restraint is evidence of virtue; in a courtly frame, its evidence of control.

The subtext is also about hierarchy. Order and arrangement arent neutral preferences; they mirror the ideal of a well-ordered soul and a well-ordered society. If your words are organized, you are organized. If you speak with composure, you are safe to trust, fit to advise, fit to lead. The emphasis on calm is especially telling: emotion is treated less as authenticity than as leakage, a breach in the facade that invites chaos.

What makes the line work is how it fuses aesthetics with authority. "Good taste" becomes a moral credential, and eloquence becomes less about dazzling an audience than proving you deserve one.