Baltasar Gracián Quotes

There is no desert like living without friends. Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil. ’Tis the sole remedy against misfortune, the very ventilation of the soul. clix

No one is born complete; perfect yourself and your activities day by day until you become a truly consummate being, your talents and your qualities all perfected.

Única regla de agradar: coger el apetito picado con el hambre con que quedó.

You should therefore never reveal what causes you pain or pleasure, so that the former may quickly end and the latter long continue.

Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed.

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.

Adelántase más la imaginación que la vista, y el engaño, que entra de ordinario por el oído, viene a salir por los ojos.

tis better to have a dispute with honourable people than to have a victory over dishonourable ones. You cannot treat with the ruined, for they have no hostages for rectitude. With them there is no true friendship, and their agreements are not binding, however stringent they may appear, because they have no feeling of honour. Never have to do with such men, for if honour does not restrain a man, virtue will not, since honour is the throne of rectitude. cxvii

El que no se hallare con ánimo de sufrir apele al retiro de sí mismo, si es que aun a sí mismo se ha de poder tolerar.

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.

Memory is not only unruly, leaving us in the lurch when most needed, but stupid as well, putting its nose into places where it is not wanted.

Triviality is annoying, and in a person's character, tedious. To keep coming back to a disagreement is a kind of mania.

Más vale ser engañado en el precio que en la mercadería.

A person has everything who cares nothing about what matters little.

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.