Culture and elegance. We are born barbarians and only raise ourselves above the beast by culture. Culture therefore makes the person; the greater a person the more culture. Thanks to this, Greece could call the rest of the world barbarians. Ignorance is very raw—nothing contributes so much to culture as knowledge. But even knowledge is coarse if without elegance. Not alone must our intelligence be elegant, but also our desires, and above all our conversation. Some people are naturally elegant in internal and external qualities, in their thoughts, in their words, in their dress, which is the rind of the soul as their talents are its fruit. There are others on the other hand, so gauche that everything about them, even their most excellent quality, is tarnished by an intolerable and barbaric want of neatness.

THE ART OF WORLDLY WISDOM BY BALTHASAR GRACIAN
TRANSLATED BY JOSEPH JACOBS 1892