“Two hundred years ago,” Settembrini said, “you had a poet in your country, a magnificent old chatterbox who set great store in good handwriting because he thought it must induce a good style. He should have gone a step further and said that a good style would lead to good deeds,” Settembrini added. For writing well was almost the same as thinking well, and thinking well was the next thing to acting well. All moral discipline, all moral perfection derived from the soul of literature, from the soul of human dignity, which was the moving spirit of both humanity and politics. Yes, they were all one, one and the same force, one and the same idea, and all of them could be comprehended in one single word. This word? Ah, it was already familiar to their ears; yet he would wager the cousins had never before rightly grasped its meaning and its majesty: the word was⁠—civilization! And as Settembrini brought it out, he flung his small, yellow-skinned right hand in the air, as though proposing a toast.