The Seven Perennial Sins and Their Offspring

pp. 37-38

Quoting “Memoirs” by Louis de Rouvroy:

Louis XIV of France “liked nobody to be in any way superior to him.  Thus he chose his ministers not for their knowledge, but for their ignorance; not for their capacity, but for their want of it. He liked to form them, as he said, liked to teach them. . . .Naturally fond of trifles, he unceasingly occupied himself with the most petty details of his troops, his household, his mansions; would even instruct his cooks, who received like novices lessons they had known by heart for years.  This vanity, this unmeasured and unreasonable love of admiration, was his ruin.”