"He who follows his lessons tastes a profound peace, and looks upon everybody as a bunch of manure"
About this Quote
Peace, in Moliere's hands, arrives with a stink.
The line pivots on a delicious contradiction: spiritual composure paired with absolute contempt. "He who follows his lessons" carries the pious, schoolmasterly promise of moral instruction - the idea that discipline and doctrine deliver serenity. Then Moliere yanks the rug: the reward for enlightenment is not charity or fellowship but the ability to look at everyone else as "a bunch of manure". The joke lands because it’s too plausible. Self-improvement cultures, religious or secular, can quietly train people to mistake their own inner calm for evidence of superiority.
The subtext is a social diagnosis. Moliere’s France was thick with moralists, faux-devout strivers, and status games disguised as virtue. His theater specialized in puncturing that performance: the sanctimonious character who’s mastered the rhetoric of righteousness but not its substance. "Profound peace" reads less like wisdom than like anesthesia - the comforting numbness that comes from sorting the world into the enlightened (me) and the irredeemable (everyone else). Once you’re there, conflict disappears because other people no longer count.
The manure image is doing more than shock work. It’s earthy, bodily, anti-elevated - a reminder that high-minded postures often rest on crude instincts: disgust, impatience, a craving to dominate. Moliere doesn’t just mock hypocrisy; he exposes how easily "lessons" become permission to dehumanize.
The line pivots on a delicious contradiction: spiritual composure paired with absolute contempt. "He who follows his lessons" carries the pious, schoolmasterly promise of moral instruction - the idea that discipline and doctrine deliver serenity. Then Moliere yanks the rug: the reward for enlightenment is not charity or fellowship but the ability to look at everyone else as "a bunch of manure". The joke lands because it’s too plausible. Self-improvement cultures, religious or secular, can quietly train people to mistake their own inner calm for evidence of superiority.
The subtext is a social diagnosis. Moliere’s France was thick with moralists, faux-devout strivers, and status games disguised as virtue. His theater specialized in puncturing that performance: the sanctimonious character who’s mastered the rhetoric of righteousness but not its substance. "Profound peace" reads less like wisdom than like anesthesia - the comforting numbness that comes from sorting the world into the enlightened (me) and the irredeemable (everyone else). Once you’re there, conflict disappears because other people no longer count.
The manure image is doing more than shock work. It’s earthy, bodily, anti-elevated - a reminder that high-minded postures often rest on crude instincts: disgust, impatience, a craving to dominate. Moliere doesn’t just mock hypocrisy; he exposes how easily "lessons" become permission to dehumanize.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sarcastic |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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