Baltasar Gracián Quotes

Aragonese Jesuit and baroque prose writer and philosopher in Castilian language (1601-1658)

Baltasar Gracián y Morales (8 January 1601 – 6 December 1658), most widely known as Baltasar Gracián, was a Spanish Jesuit author regarded as one of the most accomplished prose stylists of the Baroque era.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Pen Names: Lorenzo Gracián

Alternative Names: Balthasar Gracian • Baltasar Gracian • Baltasar Gracián y Morales

From Wikidata (CC0)

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.

Never have a companion that casts you in the shade.

Nor should we lose heart if something doesn’t please someone, for there’ll always be someone else it does.

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

There is always time to add a word, never to withdraw one.

It requires as much caution to tell the truth as to conceal it.

Harness the imagination: Sometimes curbing her, sometimes giving her rein, for she is the whole of happiness. She sets to rights even the understanding. She sinks to tyranny, not satisfied with mere faith, but demanding works. Thus she becomes the mistress of life itself. She does so with pleasure or with pain, according to the nonsense presented. She makes people contented or discontented with themselves. By dangling before some nothing but the specter of their eternal suffering, she becomes the scourge of these fools. To others she shows nothing but fortune and romance, while merrily laughing. Of all this she is capable if not held in check by the wisest of wills.

At 20 a man is a peacock, at 30 a lion, at 40 a camel, at 50 a serpent, at 60 a dog, at 70 an ape, and at 80 nothing

Be extraordinary in your excellence, if you like, but be ordinary in your display of it.

To be of use and to know how to show yourself of use, is to be twice as useful.

Everyone could have been pre-eminent at something, if they had been aware of their best quality.

Rivalry discovers that courtesy overlooks.

We have eyelids but not earlids, for the ears are the portals of learning, and Nature wanted to keep them wide open.

Know your unlucky days, for the exist. Nothing will work out right and, even though you change your game, your bad luck will remain.

Some friendships are like a marriage, others like an affair; the latter are for pleasure, the former for the abundant success they engender. Few are friends because of you yourself, many of because of your good fortune. A friend's true understanding is worth more than the many good wishes of others. Make friends by choice, then, not by chance.