Explore Quotes by Baltasar Gracian

Success rarely brings satisfaction.

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

Sometimes it proves the highest understanding not to understand.

The greatest wisdom often consist in ignorance.

Know the great men of your age.

One who was abhorred by all in prosperity is adored by all in adversity.

When everyone covets something, they are easily annoyed by it.

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.

Be known for pleasing others, especially if you govern them. Ruling other has one advantage: you can do more good than anyone else.

To equal a predecessor, one must have twice they worth.

Truth is for the minority.

Fortune soon tires of carrying anyone long on her shoulders.

Maturity is the slowness in which a man believes.

Never lose your self-respect, nor be too familiar with yourself when you are alone. Let your integrity itself be your own standard of rectitude, and be more indebted to the severity of your own judgment of yourself than to all external percepts. Desist from unseemly conduct, rather out of respect for your own virtue than for the strictures of external authority.

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

Mix a little mystery with everything, for mystery arouses veneration.

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

You have to appear wiser and more prudent than is required by the people you are dealing with if you want to give a high opinion of yourself.

Put yourself on view. This brings your talents to light.

Be first the master of yourself

Begin with another's to end with your own.