Maxims of Spanish Jesuit Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658):

• When you counsel someone, you should appear to be reminding him of something he had forgotten, not of the light he was unable to see.
• To overvalue something is a form of lying.
• Do something well, and that is quickly enough.
• Many owe their greatness to their enemies. Flattery is fiercer than hatred, for hatred corrects the faults flattery had disguised.
• Those who want to look like hard workers give the impression that they aren’t up to their jobs.
• Complaints will always discredit you. … Once divulged to others, the offenses done to us seem to make others pardonable.
• Not believing others implies that you yourself are deceitful. The liar suffers twice: he neither believes nor is believed.
• Better to be cheated by the price than by the merchandise.
• Because the ignorant do not know themselves, they never know for what they are lacking. Some would be sages if they did not believe they were so already.
• Some die because they feel everything, others because they feel nothing. Some are fools because they suffer no regrets, and others because they do.
• Some marry the first information they receive, and turn what comes later into their concubine. Since deceit is always first to arrive, there is no room left for truth.
• To hear a prince’s secrets is not a privilege but a burden. Many smash the mirror that reminds them of their ugliness. They cannot stand to see those who saw them.
• 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.
• Many pleasant things are better when they belong to someone else. … When things belong to others, we enjoy them twice as much, without the risk of losing them, and with the pleasure of novelty.
• Imagination travels faster than sight. Deceit comes in through the ears, but usually leaves through the eyes.
• Freedom is more precious than the gift that makes us lose it.
• 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.

“Honorable beginnings should serve to awaken curiosity, not to heighten people’s expectations. We are much better off when reality surpasses our expectations, and something turns out better than we thought it would. This rule does not hold true for bad things: when an evil has been exaggerated, its reality makes people applaud. What was feared as ruinous comes to seem tolerable.”