"There is no trace of bitterness in his poetry; one would almost say, there is no indignation before the evils of the world. Of course there is a reaction of indignation in the mind of the reader. La Fontaine knows very well that the reader will be on the side of the lamb against the wolf: there is no need for him to express his own indignation and he never does. In this he differs from those moralists who wrote—and at times magnificently—what one could call ‘la littérature de l’indignation’; in the works of the English moralists, Pope and Swift, and of La Bruyère also, we can perceive the controlled reactions of their wounded sensibility, their revolt against unfairness and cruelty and a burning hankering after some sort of justice. La Fontaine's attitude is that of detachment."