Baltasar Gracian

Help others solve their problems; standing farther away, you can often see matters more clearly than they do. . . The greatest service you can render someone else is helping him or her help themselves.

It is a novel kind of supremacy, the best that life can offer, to have as servants by skill those who by nature are our masters.

Advice is sometimes transmitted more successfully through a joke than grave teaching.

It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterwards.

Two kinds of people are good at foreseeing danger: those who have learned at their own expense, and the clever people who learn a great deal at the expense of others.

The envious die not once, but as oft as the envied win applause.

Never participate in the secrets of those above you; you think you share the fruit, and you share the stones - the confidence of a prince is not a grant, but a tax

Hurry is the weakness of fools.

Better mad with the rest of the world than wise alone.

It is good to vary in order that you may frustrate the curious, especially those who envy you.

The greatest service you can render someone else is helping him help himself.

Friendship multiplies blessings and...soothes the soul.

A prudent man will think more important what fate has conceded to him, than what it has denied.

Wise men appreciate all men, for they see the good in each and know how hard it is to make anything good.

Never risk your reputation on a single shot, for if you miss the loss is irreparable.

Keep the extent of your abilities unknown.The wise man does not allow his knowledge and abilities to be sounded to the bottom, if he desires to be honored at all. He allows you to know them but not to comprehend them. No one must know the extent of his abilities, lest he be disappointed. No one ever has an opportunity of fathoming him entirely. For guesses and doubts about the extent of his talents arouse more veneration than accurate knowledge of them, be they ever so great.

Lies always come first, dragging fools along by their irreparable vulgarity. Truth always lags last, limping along on the arm of time.

You should aim to be independent of any one vote, of any one fashion, of any one century.

You can cultivate taste, as you can the intellect. Full understanding whets the appetite and desire, and, later, sharpens the enjoyment of possession.

It is a great piece of skill to know how to guide your luck even while waiting for it.

A single lie destroys a whole reputation for integrity.