"The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work"

Voltaire draws a distinction between different forms of communication and the stylistic choices appropriate to each. He recognizes that flowery language, marked by ornate, elaborate expression, is at home in situations dominated by ceremony and the exchange of compliments, where the primary purpose is to please or flatter rather than to inform or persuade with substance. In these contexts, such as public speeches or addresses that serve diplomatic or social functions, the embellishment of speech does not detract from the message but rather enhances its ceremonial character. Here, “lighter beauties,” or decorative rhetorical flourishes, fill the space where substantive argument or deep content is unnecessary; the artistic style itself becomes the primary conveyance of meaning.

However, Voltaire is sharply critical of using this style in serious, substantive domains: the courtroom, the pulpit, or educational treatises. Pleadings, legal arguments, require clarity, precision, and logical rigor; ornate language may obscure the facts and weaken the force of persuasion. Sermons, intended to communicate moral or religious truths, should prioritize clarity and earnestness over ornamental display; flowery language risks turning sacred discourse into mere performance, undermining its spiritual gravity. Similarly, didactic works, which seek to instruct and impart knowledge, must favor directness and lucidity so as not to muddy the transmission of ideas.

Underlying this distinction is Voltaire’s Enlightenment commitment to reason, clarity, and utility in communication. He prizes style as a tool in the service of truth, not as an end in itself. Ornate language, divorced from substantive content, is ultimately hollow when earnest persuasion or teaching is called for. For Voltaire, the value of rhetoric lies in its appropriateness to its occasion and its service to understanding; only when there is little of solid import to say does style become the main event, and even then, its place is temporary, secondary to the demands of sense and reasoned argument.