The Wisdom of Gracian VI Flashcards
Never be associated with someone who can cast you in a poor light, whether because they’re better or worse than you.
The more perfect they are, the higher their esteem. They will always play the lead role, and you a secondary one, and if you have any esteem, it will simply be their leftovers.
Never consort with someone who eclipses you, only with someone who enhances you.
Don’t take the risk of keeping bad company.
To improve yourself, associate with the eminent; once perfected, with the mediocre.
Know how to use your friends.
3 qualities of friendship, goodness,honesty and compassion.
You shouldn’t simply seek enjoyment from friendship, but profit, for it should have the three qualities of goodness, though others argue that it should have those of being - which is one, good and true since a friend is all things.
There’s no desert like a life without friends: friendship multiplies blessings and divides troubles. It’s the only remedy for bad fortune and is an oasis of comfort for the soul.
Talk circumspectly.
With rivals, through caution; with everyone else, through decorum (propriety, with good taste).
There’s always a time to utter a word, but not to take it back.
You should speak as wills are written, for the fewer the words, the fewer the disputes.
The loquacious are more easily conquered and convinced.
Know how to triumph over envy and malevolence.
Showing contempt, even if prudent, achieves little; being polite is much better.
Each blessing is a further torture to ill will, and the glory of those envied is a personal hell to the envious.
The greatest punishment is making your good fortune their poison.
An envious person doesn’t die straight off, but bit by bit every time the person envied receives applause, the enduring fame of one rivalling the punishment of the other, the former in everlasting glory, the latter in everlasting torment.
Fame’s trumpet heralds one person’s immortality and announces another’s death - a sentence to hang by envy’s anxious rope.
Never let compassion for the unfortunate earn you the disfavour of the fortunate.
A shrewd person must pay close attention to fortune’s shuffling of the cards.
Some always side with the unfortunate, sidling up to them in their misfortune having previously shunned them when they enjoyed good fortune.
This perhaps suggests innate nobility, but not an ounce of shrewdness.
Take more care not to fail once than to succeed a hundred times.
The masses ever critical, will not recount your successes, only your failures.
The bad are better known through gossip than the good are through acclaim.
Let nobody be under any illusion: malevolence will point out every bad thing you do, but not a single good one.
Don’t be brittle as glass in dealing with people.
Especially with friends.
Some people fill up with offence and fill others with annoyance, they have a nature so petty and sensitive that it tolerates nothing, in jest or in earnest.
The slightest thing offends them, so insults are never necessary.
They are completely self-centred, slaves to their own pleasure, in pursuit of which they’ll trample over everything, and idolaters of punctiliousness.
Be instead like a lover, whose condition is akin to the diamond in its endurance and resistance.
Don’t live in a hurry.
To know how to parcel things out is to know how to enjoy them.
Some people want to devour in a day what could barely be digested in a lifetime.
Some people anticipate every happiness, bolt down the years still to come, and since they’re always in such a rush, quickly finish everything.
There are more days than joys to fill them.
Take enjoyment slowly and tasks quickly.
It’s good when tasks are completed, but bad when happiness is over.
Never be ruled by what you think your enemy should do.
Fools never do what a sensible person thinks they will, because they can’t discern what’s best.
The pro and the contra of every matter should be thought through and both sides analysed, anticipating the different courses things may take.
Opinions vary: let impartiality be attentive not so much to what will happen as to what may.
Without lying, don’t reveal every truth,
Nothing requires more care than truth.
It’s as necessary to know how to reveal it as it is to conceal it.
With a single lie, a reputation for integrity is lost: and the deceiver’s falseness revealed.
Not all truths can be spoken: some because they are important to me, others to someone else.
Don’t hold opinions doggedly
Every fool is utterly convinced, and everyone utterly convinced is a fool, and the more mistaken their opinion, the greater their tenacity.
Even when the evidence is clear, it’s sensible to yield, for the correctness of your opinion will not go unnoticed, and your politeness will be recognised.
Your will must be tenacious, not your judgment.
Anything popular do yourself, anything unpopular, use others to do it.
With the one you garner affection, with the other you deflect hatred.
Those at the top necessarily have to reward or punish. Let good things come directly, bad things come indirectly.
Have something to deflect hatred and slander, the blows of the disgruntled.
