Baltasar Gracián - The Art of Worldly Wisdom

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Never do anything when you are in a temper, for you will do everything wrong.

Baltasar Gracián
None is so perfect that he does not need at times the advice of others.

Baltasar Gracián
If you are wise, live as you can; if you cannot, live as you would.

Baltasar Gracián
Make your friends your teachers and mingle the pleasures of conversation with the advantages of instruction.

Baltasar Gracián
One deceit needs many others, and so the whole house is built in the air and must soon come to the ground

Baltasar Gracián
When you find Fortune favorable, stride boldly forward, for she favors the bold, and being a woman, the young.

Baltasar Gracián
If there is nothing left to desire, there is everything to fear, an unhappy state of happiness.

Baltasar Gracián
You may be obliged to wage war, but not to use poisoned arrows.

Baltasar Gracián
It is profound philosophy to sound the depths of feeling and distinguish traits of character. Men must be studied as deeply as books.

Baltasar Gracián
The wise are always impatient, for he that increases knowledge increases impatience of folly.

Baltasar Gracián
Avoid affectation. The more merit, the less affectation, which gives a vulgar flavor. The most eminent merits lose most by it, for they appear proud and artificial instead of being the product of nature, and the natural is always more pleasing than the artificial. One always feels sure that the man who affects a virtue has it not.

Baltasar Gracián
Hope is a great falsifier. Let good judgment keep her in check.

Baltasar Gracián
Complaints will always discredit you. Rather than compassion and consolation, they provoke passion and insolence, and encourage those who hear our complaints to behave like those we complain about. Once divulged to others, the offenses done to us seem to make others pardonable. Some complain of past offenses and give rise to future ones.

Baltasar Gracián
Never open the door to the least of evils, for many other, greater ones lurk outside.

Baltasar Gracián
Life is a warfare against the malice of others.

Baltasar Gracián
Some people belong entirely to others … They have not a day, not an hour to call their own, so completely do they give themselves to others. This is true even in matters of understanding. Some people know everything for others and nothing for themselves.

Baltasar Gracián
Many owe their greatness to their enemies. Flattery is fiercer than hatred, for hatred corrects the faults flattery had disguised.

Baltasar Gracián
Fortune pays you sometimes for the intensity of her favors by the shortness of their duration. She soon tires of carrying any one long on her shoulders.

Baltasar Gracián
Things do not pass for what they are, but for what they seem. Most things are judged by their jackets.

Baltasar Gracián
Virtue alone is for real; all else is sham. Talent and greatness depend on virtue, not on fortune. Only virtue is sufficient unto herself. She makes us love the living and remember the dead.

Baltasar Gracián
Trust the friends of today as though they will be the enemies of tomorrow.

Baltasar Gracián
Imagination travels faster than sight. Deceit comes in through the ears, but usually leaves through the eyes.

Baltasar Gracián
To dissent from others' views is regarded as an insult because it is their condemnation.

Baltasar Gracián
Truth always lags last, limping along on the arm of Time.

Baltasar Gracián
If you cannot make knowledge your servant, make it your friend.

Baltasar Gracián
All victories breed hate, and that over your superior is foolish or fatal.

Baltasar Gracián
It is a great piece of skill to know how to guide your luck even while waiting for it.

Baltasar Gracián
Many have had their greatness made for them by their enemies.

Baltasar Gracián
Keep expectation alive. Keep stirring it up. Let much promise more, and great deeds herald greater.

Baltasar Gracián
Cultivate tact, for it is the mark of culture, and as important as character itself. It is the lubricant of human relationships, softening contacts and minimizing friction.

Baltasar Gracián