Baltasar Gracián Quotes

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

For the advice in a joke is sometimes more useful than the most serious teaching.

Better to be cheated by the price than by the merchandise.

Saberlos conservar es más que el hazerlos amigos.

Knowledge and courage contribute in turn to greatness. Since they are immortal, they immortalize. You are as much as you know, and a wise person can do anything. A person without knowledge is a world of darkness. Judgement and strength, eyes and hands; without courage, wisdom is sterile.

Life is arduous without any breaks, like a long journey without any inns. Learned variety makes it pleasant. Spend the first part of a fine life in communication with the dead. We are born to know and to know ourselves, and books reliably turn us into people. Spend the second part with the living: see and examine all that's good in the world. Not everything can be found in one country; the universal Father has shared out his gifts and sometimes endows the ugliest with the most. Let the third stage be spent entirely with yourself: the ultimate happiness, to philosophize.

Never have a companion that casts you in the shade.

In heaven, everything is good; in hell, everything bad. In the world, since it lies between the two, you find both. We are placed between two extremes, and so participate in both. Good and bad luck alternate; not all is happy, nor all hostile. This world is a zero: on its own, it's worth nothing; joined to heaven, a great deal. Indifference to its variety constitutes good sense - the wise are never surprised. Our life is arranged like a play, everything will be sorted out in the end. Take care, then, to end it well.

La virtud es cosa de veras, todo lo demás de burlas. La capacidad y grandeza se ha de medir por la virtud, no por la fortuna. Ella sola se basta a sí misma. Vivo el hombre, le haze amable; y muerto, memorable.

Que el aviso haga antes viso de recuerdo de lo que olvidava que de luz de lo que no alcançó.

Engage with reason so misfortune doesn't contend with you.

a man is judged by his friends, for there was never agreement between wise men and fools.

moral cowardice lowers one more than physical. Many have had eminent qualities, yet, for want of a stout heart, they passed inanimate lives and found a tomb in their own sloth. Wise Nature has thoughtfully combined in the bee the sweetness of its honey with the sharpness of its sting. lv