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.
Baltasar GracianRead
Never risk your reputation on a single shot, for if you miss the loss is irreparable.
Interpretation
Be cautious about taking large risks that can damage your reputation.
This quote emphasizes the importance of being careful and thoughtful in decision-making, particularly when those decisions can have lasting impacts on your reputation. It warns against making hasty actions or taking risks that, if unsuccessful, could lead to irreparable harm to one's public image and trustworthiness.
In practice
In a business meeting, you might use this quote to advise colleagues against making impulsive decisions that could jeopardize the company's reputation.
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.
As I talk about strengths and weaknesses in academic economics, one interesting fact you are entitled to know is that I never took a course in economics. And with this striking lack of credentials, you may wonder why I have the chutzpah to be up here giving this talk. The answer is I have a black belt in chutzpah. I was born with it.
Never have anything to do with likes and dislikes. The absence of what one likes is painful, as is the presence of what one dislikes. Therefore don't take a liking to anything. To lose what one likes is hard, but there are no bonds for those who have no likes and dislikes. From preference arises sorrow, from preference arises fear, but he who is freed from preference has no sorrow and certainly no fear.
Relying on the power of kindness is a sensitive undertaking. The challenge is to inspire people to be kind more often without tainting the selflessness that comes from doing something nice with no ulterior motive.
Being nice doesnβt make you stupid. It makes you feel good because you know you are gracious enough to forgive and smart enough to realize how distasteful some people can be.
Spending plenty of time on something can be the most sophisticated form of revenge.
My confidence is that there will for a long time be virtue and good sense enough in our countrymen to correct abuses.
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