Daily Inspiration Quote by Moliere

“Perfect reason” is a deliciously slippery phrase coming from Moliere, a playwright who made a career out of exposing how quickly “reason” becomes a costume people wear to excuse their impulses. On the surface, he’s praising moderation: avoid extremes, stay sober, be wise. Underneath, he’s taking aim at the social types who insist they’re guided by rational principles while behaving like zealots, hypocrites, or fools with excellent diction.

The line works because it flatters the listener’s self-image and then quietly sets a trap. Who doesn’t want to believe they possess “perfect reason”? But Moliere’s stage is crowded with characters who think they do: the moral absolutist, the religious crank, the jealous husband, the precious snob. Extremity, in his comedies, isn’t just loud behavior; it’s the rigidity of a mind convinced it cannot be wrong. “Reason flees” suggests that sanity isn’t defeated by extremity so much as it evacuates when conversation turns into crusade.

Context matters: 17th-century France prized decorum, courtly self-control, and a polished rhetoric of propriety. Moliere treats that cultural ideal as both aspiration and weapon. “Wise with sobriety” nods to classical restraint, but it also hints at performance: sobriety is what respectable people signal in public, even when their private appetites run the show.

So the intent isn’t bland centrism. It’s a warning about fanaticism wearing moral perfume - and a reminder that real intelligence often looks like temperance because it refuses the cheap thrill of certainty.