"Men sometimes feel injured by praise because it assigns a limit to their merit; few people are modest enough not to take offense that one appreciates them"
About this Quote
Praise, in Luc de Clapiers' telling, is not a gift but a border checkpoint. It flatters you while quietly stamping your passport with a destination you may not have chosen. The sting comes from the hidden arithmetic inside compliments: to name what is admirable is also to imply what is not. Even the warmest approval can feel like an inventory, a neat little list that turns a person into a measurable object.
That is the intent: to expose vanity's more sophisticated form. We like to imagine arrogance as loud, the guy who demands applause. Clapiers targets the subtler impulse: the offended genius who hears praise as condescension, as if admiration from others automatically misjudges the true scale of one's potential. The subtext is bleakly funny in the way a good moralist is funny: you can be insulted by praise not because it diminishes you, but because it fails to worship you adequately. Compliments become a mirror that doesn't show the angle you prefer.
Context matters. Writing in the early Enlightenment, Clapiers is part of the French moralist tradition that treats social life as theater and selfhood as a negotiation. Salon culture ran on reputation, and reputation ran on phrasing. In that world, to be praised was to be publicly categorized. The line "few people are modest enough..". lands like a surgical aside: the real rarity isn't talent, it's the ability to accept being seen without trying to control the lens.
That is the intent: to expose vanity's more sophisticated form. We like to imagine arrogance as loud, the guy who demands applause. Clapiers targets the subtler impulse: the offended genius who hears praise as condescension, as if admiration from others automatically misjudges the true scale of one's potential. The subtext is bleakly funny in the way a good moralist is funny: you can be insulted by praise not because it diminishes you, but because it fails to worship you adequately. Compliments become a mirror that doesn't show the angle you prefer.
Context matters. Writing in the early Enlightenment, Clapiers is part of the French moralist tradition that treats social life as theater and selfhood as a negotiation. Salon culture ran on reputation, and reputation ran on phrasing. In that world, to be praised was to be publicly categorized. The line "few people are modest enough..". lands like a surgical aside: the real rarity isn't talent, it's the ability to accept being seen without trying to control the lens.
Quote Details
| Topic | Humility |
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