Aphorisms 76–150

76 Do not always be joking. Prudence is known in what is serious, which is held in higher credit than what is witty. He who is always joking is never a man in earnest. We put such men on a par with liars in not believing them: the liars for fear of lies, the jokers for fear of mockery. One never knows when they speak with judgment, which is as good as having none. There is no greater slight than continual drollery. Others win the fame of wits and lose the credit of sensible men. Jollity must have its moment; all the others belong to seriousness.

77 Know how to adapt oneself to all. A discerning Proteus:¹ with the learned, learned, and with the saint, saintly. A great art of winning everyone, for likeness wins benevolence. Observe temperaments and tune oneself to each one’s; with the serious and the jovial alike, go along with the current, making a politic transformation: urgent for those who depend on others. This great subtlety of living requires great capital; it is less difficult for the universal man, with wit in knowledge and temperament in tastes.

78 Art in attempting. Folly always rushes in, for all fools are bold. The same simplicity that first keeps them from noticing obstacles afterward takes away their feeling for slights. But good sense goes in with great caution. Its scouts are observation and wariness; they go ahead exploring, so that it can proceed without danger. All rashness is condemned by discernment to a fall, though luck may sometimes acquit it. It is well to go slowly where great depth is feared: let shrewdness feel the way, and prudence gain ground. There are great shoals in human dealings today: one must keep sounding all the time.

79 A genial temperament. If tempered, it is a gift, not a defect. A grain of drollery seasons everything. The greatest men also play the card of humor, which wins everyone’s goodwill; but always keeping up the air of good sense and paying their respects to decorum. Others make a jest a short cut out of difficulty, for there are things that must be taken in jest, and sometimes the very things the other takes most in earnest. It shows a gentle nature, a hook for hearts.

80 Care in getting information. Most of life is lived on information. What we see is the least of it; we live on others’ word. The ear is the side door of truth and the front door of lies. Truth is ordinarily seen, and heard only by way of exception; it rarely arrives in its pure element, still less when it comes from far away; it always brings some admixture of the feelings it has passed through; passion tinges with its colors whatever it touches, now odious, now favorable. It always aims at making an impression: great caution with the one who praises, greater with the one who blames. This point requires all one’s attention, to discover the intention of the one who comes between, knowing beforehand on which foot he set out. Let reflection be the assay of the wanting and the false.

81 Make use of renewing one’s brilliance. It is the privilege of the phoenix. Excellence usually grows old, and with it fame. Custom lessens admiration, and a middling novelty usually defeats the greatest eminence grown old. Make use, then, of rebirth, in courage, in wit, in good fortune, in everything: venture upon gallant novelties, dawning many times like the sun, changing the stages on which one shines, so that absence from the one may call forth longing there, and novelty in the other applause here.

82 Never squeeze anything dry, neither the bad nor the good. A wise man reduced all wisdom to moderation in all things.² The utmost right becomes a wrong,³ and the orange that is squeezed too hard ends by yielding the bitter. Even in enjoyment one must never go to extremes. Wit itself runs dry if pressed too hard, and whoever milks like a tyrant will draw blood instead of milk.

83 Allow oneself some venial slip. For a lapse is sometimes the best recommendation of one’s gifts. Envy has its ostracism, the more civil the more criminal. It accuses what is very perfect of sinning by not sinning; and because it is perfect in everything, it condemns it in everything. It turns Argus⁴ to find faults in what is very good, if only for consolation. Censure, like lightning, strikes the loftiest distinctions. Let Homer nod, then, now and then,⁵ and affect some carelessness in wit or in courage, but never in good sense, to calm malevolence before it bursts with venom: it will be like throwing one’s cloak to the bull of envy to save one’s immortality.

84 Know how to use one’s enemies. Everything must be taken hold of not by the blade, where it wounds, but by the hilt, where it defends; and rivalry much more so. A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends. Malevolence often levels mountains of difficulty that favor would not have dared to undertake. Many have had their greatness built for them by those who wished them ill. Flattery is fiercer than hatred, for hatred effectively remedies the faults that flattery hides. The sensible man makes a mirror of spite, more faithful than that of affection, and forestalls detraction by preventing his defects or mending them, for great is the caution of one who lives on the frontier of a rivalry, of a malevolence.

85 Do not be the wild card.⁶ It is a failing of everything excellent that much use turns into abuse. The very fact that everyone covets it ends by annoying everyone. It is a great misfortune to be good for nothing; no smaller one to want to be good for everything. Such people end by losing through winning too much, and are afterward as much detested as they were desired before. These wild cards are found, worn with handling, in every kind of perfection, and losing that first esteem of the rare, they earn the contempt of the common. The only remedy for everything extreme is to keep to a middle in one’s brilliance: the excess should be in the perfection and the temperance in the display. The more brightly a torch shines, the more it consumes itself and the less it lasts. Scarcity of appearance is rewarded with gains in esteem.

86 Forestall evil rumors. The common crowd has many heads, and so many eyes for malice and many tongues for discredit. Some evil rumor may happen to run through it that tarnishes the greatest credit; and if it should become a vulgar nickname, it will finish off one’s reputation. It is commonly given a foothold by some conspicuous lapse, by ridiculous defects, which are welcome matter for its gossip, though there are also blemishes thrown out by particular rivalry for common malice to take up; for there are mouths of malevolence, and they ruin a great fame more quickly with a joke than with a brazen charge. Ill fame is very easily acquired, because the bad is very believable, and it costs much to erase. Let the sensible man, then, avoid these lapses, opposing vulgar insolence with his attention, for it is easier to forestall than to remedy.

87 Culture and polish. Man is born a barbarian; he redeems himself from the beast by cultivating himself. Culture makes persons, and the more of it, the more so. On the strength of it Greece could call the whole rest of the universe barbarian. Ignorance is very coarse; nothing refines like knowledge. But even wisdom itself was crude if unpolished. Not only the understanding must be polished, but also the will, and above all conversation. There are men naturally polished, elegant inside and out, in thought and in words, in the attire of the body, which is like the rind, and in the gifts of the soul, which are the fruit. There are others, on the contrary, so crude that they have tarnished all that is theirs, and sometimes their eminences, with an intolerable, barbarous slovenliness.

88 Let one’s dealings be on a large scale, aiming at sublimity in them. The great man must not be petty in his conduct. One must never go too far into particulars, least of all in unpleasant matters; for though it is an advantage to notice everything in passing, it is not to want to look into everything on purpose. One should usually proceed with a gentlemanly generality, a branch of gallantry. Dissembling is a great part of governing. Most things should be let pass, among family, among friends, and more among enemies. All niggling is tiresome, and in a man’s character, burdensome. Going back and forth over a grievance is a kind of mania; and as a rule each man’s way of conducting himself will match his heart and his capacity.

89 Comprehension of oneself. In temperament, in wit; in verdicts, in feelings. No one can be master of himself who does not first comprehend himself. There are mirrors for the face, none for the spirit: let discerning reflection on oneself be that mirror. And when a man forgets his outward image, let him keep the inward one, to amend it, to improve it. Let him know the strength of his good sense and subtlety before undertaking anything; let him gauge his temper before committing himself. Let him have his depth measured and his capital weighed for everything.

90 The art of living long: living well. Two things soon put an end to life: folly or baseness. Some lost it for not knowing how to keep it, others for not wanting to. As virtue is its own reward, so vice is its own punishment. Whoever lives fast in vice soon comes to an end in two ways; whoever lives fast in virtue never dies. Integrity of spirit communicates itself to the body, and a good life is held to be long not only in intensity but in extent itself.

91 Always act free of any misgiving that one is acting imprudently. The suspicion of a blunder in the one who acts is already evidence in the one who watches, especially if he is a rival. If, in the heat of passion, one’s verdict already has misgivings, afterward, free of passion, it will condemn the deed as plain folly. Actions whose prudence is in doubt are dangerous; omission would be safer. Good sense does not admit probabilities: it always walks in the noonday light of reason. How can an enterprise turn out well that misgiving condemns even as it is conceived? And if the most carefully weighed resolution, carried within nemine discrepante, without a dissenting voice, often turns out unhappily, what can be expected of one that began wavering in reason and ill-omened by one’s verdict?

92 Transcendent sense. I mean in everything. It is the first and supreme rule of action and of speech, the more enjoined the greater and higher the posts. A grain of good sense is worth more than hundredweights of subtlety. It is a walking on the safe side, though not so much on the applauded side, but the reputation of good sense is the triumph of fame: it will be enough to satisfy the sensible, whose vote is the touchstone of success.

93 The universal man. Composed of every perfection, he is worth many. He makes living most happy, sharing this enjoyment with those close to him. Variety with perfection is the entertainment of life. It is a great art to know how to make the most of everything good; and since nature, by his eminence, made man a compendium of all of nature, let art make him a universe by exercise and cultivation of taste and understanding.

94 An unfathomable capital. Let the attentive man avoid having the bottom of his knowledge or of his worth sounded, if he wants everyone to venerate him. Let him allow himself to be known, not comprehended. Let no one find out the limits of his capacity, because of the evident danger of undeceiving. Let him never give anyone the chance to grasp all of him: the opinion of, and the doubt about, how far each man’s capital reaches produce greater effects of veneration than the evidence of it, however great.

95 Know how to keep expectation alive. Keep feeding it. Let much promise more, and let the best action be a bid for greater ones. One must not stake everything on the first throw: it is a great trick to know how to husband oneself, in strength and in knowledge, and to keep advancing one’s performance.

96 Great synderesis. It is the throne of reason, the base of prudence, for by virtue of it success costs little. It is a lot dealt by heaven, and the most to be desired as the first and the best: the first piece of armor, so urgent that the lack of no other piece earns a man the name of wanting; its lack is the most noticed. All the actions of life depend on its influence, and all seek its approval, for everything must be done with sense. It consists in an inborn inclination to all that most conforms to reason, always marrying what is most right.

97 Achieve and preserve reputation. It is the usufruct of fame. It costs much, because it is born of eminences, which are as rare as mediocrities are common. Once achieved, it is easily kept. It obliges much and does more. It is a kind of majesty when it becomes veneration, by the sublimity of its cause and its sphere; but substantial reputation is the kind that has always counted.

98 Encipher one’s will. The passions are the breaches of the spirit. The most practical knowledge lies in dissembling; whoever plays with the cards face up runs the risk of losing. Let the reserve of the guarded man compete with the attention of the observant: against lynxes of reasoning, cuttlefish of inwardness. Let no one know his taste, lest he be forestalled, by some with contradiction, by others with flattery.

99 Reality and appearance. Things pass not for what they are but for what they seem. Those who look within are rare, and those who are satisfied with appearances many. It is not enough to be right with a face of malice.

100 A man undeceived: a Christian sage, a courtier philosopher. But not to seem so, still less to affect it. Philosophizing is in discredit, though it is the greatest exercise of the wise. The science of the sensible lives in disrepute. Seneca introduced it in Rome; it was kept up for some time at court; now it is held to be an irrelevance. But undeceiving was always the pasture of prudence, the delight of integrity.

101 Half the world is laughing at the other half, and all are fools. Either everything is good or everything is bad, according to the votes. What one follows, another hounds. An insufferable fool is he who would regulate every object by his own notion. Perfections do not depend on a single liking: there are as many tastes as faces, and as varied. There is no defect without its devotee, nor should one lose heart because things do not please some, for there will be no lack of others who prize them; nor should the applause of these be grounds for vanity, for others will condemn what they applaud. The standard of true satisfaction is the approval of men of reputation who have a vote in that order of things. One does not live by a single vote, nor by one fashion, nor by one century.

102 A stomach for fortune’s great mouthfuls. In the body of prudence a large crop is not the least important part, for a great capacity is made up of great parts. Good fortune does not embarrass the man who deserves still greater; what is surfeit to some is hunger to others. There are many with whom any very important dish disagrees, through the narrowness of their nature, neither accustomed nor born to such sublime posts; their manners turn sour, and with the fumes that rise from borrowed honor their heads begin to swim. They run great danger in high places and cannot contain themselves, because their luck will not fit inside them. Let the great man show, then, that he still has room for greater things, and let him flee with special care from anything that might suggest a narrow heart.

103 Majesty, each in his own way. Let all one’s actions be, if not those of a king, worthy of one, according to one’s sphere; royal conduct within the limits of one’s sensible lot: sublimity of action, loftiness of thought. And in all his affairs let a man represent a king by merit, if not in reality, for true sovereignty lies in integrity of conduct; nor will he need to envy greatness who can be its standard. Especially those close to the throne should catch something of true superiority, and share in the gifts of majesty rather than in the ceremonies of vanity, affecting not the imperfection of puffiness but the distinction of substance.

104 Take the pulse of posts. They vary among themselves: knowing them is a masterly knowledge, and one that needs observation; some require courage, others subtlety. Those that depend on rectitude are easier to manage, and those that depend on artifice harder. For the former a good nature is all that is needed; for the latter all one’s attention and vigilance are not enough. Governing men is a laborious occupation, and more so madmen or fools: double sense is needed to deal with one who has none. An intolerable post is the one that demands the whole man, with fixed hours and unvarying matter; better are those free of tedium, joining variety with gravity, for alternation refreshes taste. The most authoritative are those whose dependence is least, or most distant; and the worst is the one that in the end makes a man sweat at the human reckoning,⁷ and more at the divine.

105 Do not be a bore. The man of one matter and of one word is usually tiresome. Brevity flatters, and does more business; it gains by courtesy what it loses by curtness. The good, if brief, twice good; and even the bad, if little, not so bad. Quintessences work better than farragos; and it is a common truth that a long man is seldom a man of understanding, long not so much in the matter of his frame as in the form of his discourse. There are men who serve rather as an encumbrance than as an ornament of the universe, odd pieces of furniture that everyone pushes aside. Let the discerning man avoid being a nuisance, much less to great personages, who live very busy lives, for it would be worse to put out one of them than all the rest of the world. What is well said is soon said.

106 Do not make a show of one’s fortune. Flaunting one’s dignity offends more than flaunting one’s person. Playing the great man is odious; it was enough for him to be envied. Esteem is won the less the more it is sought; it depends on the respect of others; and so no one can take it for himself; he must deserve it from others and wait for it. Great posts require an authority suited to their exercise, without which they cannot be exercised worthily. Let a man keep the authority he deserves in order to fulfill what is substantial in his obligations: not squeezing it, but helping it; and all who play the grandee in office show that they did not deserve it, and that the dignity sits on top of them. If he must rely on something, let it be the eminence of his gifts rather than what is adventitious; for even a king is to be venerated more for his personal sovereignty than for the outward kind.

107 Show no satisfaction with oneself. Let a man live neither discontented, which is pusillanimity, nor satisfied, which is folly. Satisfaction in most people is born of ignorance and ends in a foolish happiness that, though it entertains the taste, does not maintain one’s credit. Since it cannot reach the superlative perfections of others, it is content with any common mediocrity in itself. Misgiving was always useful, as well as sensible, either as a precaution so that things turn out well or as a consolation when they turn out badly; for the slight of his fortune comes as nothing new to one who already feared it. Homer himself nods now and then, and Alexander falls from his high estate and from his illusion. Things depend on many circumstances; what triumphed in one place, and on one occasion, fails in another; but the incorrigibility of folly lies in this, that the vainest satisfaction has turned into a flower, and its seed keeps on sprouting.

108 A short cut to being a person: knowing whose side to keep. Dealings are very effective. Customs and tastes are shared. Temperament, and even wit, rub off without one feeling it. Let the quick man, then, try to keep company with the self-controlled, and likewise with the other temperaments; in this way he will achieve temperance without violence: it is a great skill to know how to temper oneself. The alternation of contraries beautifies the universe and sustains it, and if it creates harmony in nature, greater harmony in morals. Let him make use of this politic advice in choosing his familiars and his servants, for by the meeting of extremes a very discerning mean will be adjusted.

109 Do not be a faultfinder. There are men of fierce temperament who make a crime of everything, and not out of passion but by nature. They condemn everyone, some for what they have done, others for what they will do. It shows a spirit worse than cruel, which is to say vile, and they accuse with such exaggeration that they make beams out of motes to put out eyes: slave drivers at every post, who make a galley of what might be Elysium; and if passion comes into it, they carry everything to extremes. Ingenuousness, on the contrary, finds a way out for everything, if not of intention, then of inadvertence.

110 Do not wait to be a setting sun. It is a maxim of the sensible to leave things before they leave them. Let a man know how to make a triumph of his very end; for sometimes the sun itself, while still shining bright, withdraws behind a cloud so as not to be seen sinking, and leaves people in suspense as to whether it has set or not. Let him slip away from sunsets so as not to burst with slights; let him not wait for people to turn their backs on him, for they will bury him alive to feeling and dead to esteem. The prudent man retires the racehorse in good time and does not wait for it to fall in mid-course and raise a laugh. Let beauty break her mirror in good time and with cunning, and not with impatience later, on seeing herself undeceived.

111 Have friends. It is a second being. Every friend is good and wise for his friend. Among friends everything turns out well. A man will be worth as much as others wish; and for them to wish it, one must win their tongues by way of their hearts. There is no spell like good service, and to win friendships the best means is to make them. Most of what we have, and the best of it, depends on others. One must live either among friends or among enemies. Every day a man should work at winning someone, if not as an intimate, then as a well-wisher, for some remain afterward as confidants, having passed the test of choice.

112 Win kindly affection, for even the First and Supreme Cause, in its greatest affairs, foresees and disposes it. One comes to good opinion by way of feeling. Some trust so much to merit that they scorn diligence; but attention knows well that the road of merits alone is a long way round if they are not helped by favor. Benevolence makes everything easy and supplies everything; it does not always find gifts but puts them there, such as courage, integrity, wisdom, even discernment. It never sees ugliness, because it would not want to see it. It usually arises from material correspondence: in temperament, nation, kinship, homeland, and post. The formal kind is more sublime: in gifts, obligations, reputation, merits. The whole difficulty is to win it, for it is easily kept. It can be worked for, and one can learn to make use of it.

113 In prosperity, prepare for adversity. It is a wise device to lay in provisions for winter in summer, and it is easier then. Favors are cheap then, and friendships abundant. It is good to save for bad times, for adversity is dear and short of everything. Let there be a reserve of friends and of the grateful, for some day one will prize what one now ignores. Baseness never has friends: in prosperity because it does not know them, in adversity because they do not know it.

114 Never compete. Every claim that meets opposition damages one’s credit. Competition at once aims to tarnish, in order to outshine. Few wage fair war; rivalry uncovers the defects that courtesy forgot. Many lived in good credit as long as they had no rivals. The heat of opposition revives or resurrects dead infamies, digs up stenches past and ancestral. Competition begins with a manifesto of blemishes, helping itself to all it can and should not; and though at times, indeed most times, offenses are no useful weapons, it makes of them a vile satisfaction for its revenge, and shakes them out with such force that it makes the dust of oblivion fly off old slights. Benevolence was always peaceful, and reputation benevolent.

115 Get used to the bad dispositions of those around one, as to ugly faces: it is expedient where dependence comes in. There are fierce temperaments with whom one can neither live nor do without. It is a skill, then, to grow accustomed to them, as to ugliness, so that they do not come as something new in the terror of the moment. The first time they frighten, but little by little that first horror wears off, and reflection forestalls vexations or tolerates them.

116 Always deal with people bound by obligations. One can commit oneself to them, and commit them. Their very obligation is the best security in dealing with them, even when it comes to wrangling, for they act as who they are, and it is better to fight with decent people than to triumph over base ones. There are no good dealings with baseness, because it does not feel obliged to integrity; that is why among the base there is never true friendship, nor is their fine courtesy of good alloy, though it may look so, because it is not grounded in honor. Always renounce a man without honor, for whoever does not esteem honor does not esteem virtue; and honor is the throne of integrity.

117 Never talk about oneself. One must either praise oneself, which is vanity, or blame oneself, which is pettiness; and being a fault of good sense in the one who speaks, it is a penance for those who hear. If this is to be avoided among intimates, much more in high places, where one speaks in public, and any appearance of folly already passes for folly. Speaking of those present has the same drawback for good sense, because of the danger of running onto one of two reefs: flattery or blame.

118 Gain a name for courtesy, for that is enough to make a man applauded. Courtesy is the chief part of culture, a kind of spell, and so it wins everyone’s goodwill, just as discourtesy earns universal contempt and annoyance. If discourtesy is born of pride, it is hateful; if of boorishness, contemptible. Courtesy should always be more rather than less, but not the same for all, for that would degenerate into injustice. Among enemies it is held a debt, so that one’s courage may be seen. It costs little and is worth much: whoever honors is honored. Gallantry and honor have this advantage, that they remain: the one with him who practices it, the other with him who pays it.

119 Do not make oneself disliked. Aversion is not to be provoked, for even unbidden it comes forward. There are many who hate for nothing, without knowing how or why. Malevolence gets ahead of obligation. The irascible appetite is more effective and quicker for harm than the concupiscible for profit. Some take pains to fall out with everyone, from an annoying or annoyed temperament; and once hatred takes hold, it is, like a bad opinion, hard to erase. Men fear the judicious, hate slanderers, are sickened by the conceited, abhor mockers, and leave the eccentric alone. Let a man show esteem, then, in order to be esteemed; whoever would found a house must take account of others.⁸

120 Live in a practical way. Even knowledge must be in fashion, and where it is not in use, one must know how to play the ignorant. Ways of reasoning and of taste change with the times: one must not reason in the old way, and one must have taste in the modern way. The taste of the leading heads casts the vote in each order of things. That is the one to follow for the time being, and to carry on to eminence. Let the sensible man accommodate himself to the present, though the past may seem better to him, in the attire of the soul as of the body. Only in goodness does this rule of life not hold, for virtue must always be practiced. Telling the truth and keeping one’s word are no longer known and seem things of other times; and good men seem made for the good times, yet they are always loved; so that if there are any, they are not in fashion, nor imitated. Oh, great misfortune of our century, that virtue is held strange and malice current! Let the discerning man live as he can, if not as he would like. Let him value what luck has granted him more than what it has denied him.

121 Do not make business out of what is no business. Just as some make a tale of everything, others make business of everything: they always talk of importance and take everything in earnest, reducing it to quarrel and mystery. Few vexing things are to be taken to heart, for that would be committing oneself to no purpose. It is getting things backward to take to heart what should be shrugged off. Many things that were something became nothing by being left alone; and others that were nothing became much because they were made much of. At the beginning it is easy to put an end to anything; afterward, not. Often the remedy itself makes the illness, and letting things be is not the worst rule of life.

122 Mastery in speech and in action. It makes itself much room everywhere and wins respect in advance. It has its influence in everything: in conversation, in oratory, even in walking; and even in one’s glance, in one’s love. It is a great victory to capture hearts. It is born not of foolish boldness, nor of tiresome long-windedness, but of a seemly authority, born of a superior temperament and aided by merits.

123 The unaffected man. The more gifts, the less affectation, which is usually the vulgar blemish of them all. It is as tiresome to others as it is painful to the one who keeps it up, for he lives a martyr to care and torments himself with punctiliousness. Eminences themselves lose their merit by it, because they are judged to be born of artificial strain rather than free nature, and everything natural was always more pleasing than the artificial. The affected are taken for foreigners in what they affect; the better a thing is done, the more the effort must be belied, so that the perfection is seen to fall naturally from one’s nature. Nor in fleeing affectation must one fall into it by affecting not to affect. The discerning man must never let on that he knows his merits, for that very carelessness awakens attention in others. Twice eminent is he who encloses all perfections in himself and none in his own estimation; and by the opposite path he arrives at the goal of applause.

124 Come to be wished for. Few have won so much of people’s goodwill, and if it is the goodwill of the sensible, it is happiness. Lukewarmness toward those who are leaving is the ordinary thing. There are ways to deserve this prize of affection: eminence in one’s post and in one’s gifts is a sure way; pleasantness, an effective one. Eminence breeds dependence, so that it is seen that the office needed the man and not the man the office; some do honor to their posts, others are honored by them. It is no advantage to be made to look good by a bad successor, for that is not being wished for absolutely, but the other’s being hated.

125 Do not be a green book.⁹ It is a sign that one’s own fame is worn out to concern oneself with others’ infamy. Some would like to hide, if not wash away, their own stains with those of others; or they console themselves, which is the consolation of fools. Their breath smells foul, for they are the sewers of the town’s filth. In these matters, the more one scratches, the more one is muddied. Few escape some original failing, in the direct line or the collateral. Faults are not known in those who are little known. Let the attentive man flee from being a register of infamies, which is to be a hated roll of shame and, though alive, soulless.

126 The fool is not the one who commits a folly, but the one who, having committed it, does not know how to hide it. One’s affections must be sealed; how much more one’s defects! All men err, but with this difference: the shrewd belie the errors they have made, and fools tell lies about those still to be made. Credit lies in caution more than in conduct: if a man is not chaste, let him be cautious.¹⁰ The lapses of great men are more observed, like eclipses of the great lights. Let it be an exception in friendship not to confide one’s defects to it; not even, if it were possible, to one’s own self. But here one may make use of that other rule of life, which is knowing how to forget.

127 Ease in everything. It is the life of gifts, the breath of speech, the soul of action, the distinction of distinctions themselves. The other perfections are the ornament of nature, but ease is the ornament of the perfections themselves: it is praised even in reasoning. It owes most to privilege and least to study, for it is superior even to discipline; it goes beyond facility and advances to gallantry; it presupposes freedom and adds perfection. Without it all beauty is dead, and all grace, disgrace. It runs through courage, discernment, prudence, and majesty itself. It is a politic short cut in dispatch, and a refined way out of every entanglement.

128 Loftiness of spirit. It is among the principal requisites of a hero, for it kindles every kind of greatness. It heightens taste, enlarges the heart, raises thought, ennobles character, and disposes to majesty. Wherever it is found, it stands out, and sometimes, belied by the envy of fortune, it bursts forth to show itself. It expands in the will, even when it is constrained in what is possible. Magnanimity, generosity, and every heroic gift recognize it as their source.

129 Never complain. Complaint always brings discredit. It serves rather as an example of daring to passion than as consolation to compassion. It opens the way for the hearer to do the same, and knowledge of the first man’s grievance is the second man’s excuse. Some, by complaining of past offenses, give a foothold to future ones, and seeking remedy or consolation, they invite gloating, and even contempt. It is better policy to celebrate the obligations one owes to some so that they become commitments for others; repeating the favors of the absent is soliciting those of the present, is selling the credit of some to others. And let the attentive man never publish either slights or defects, only marks of esteem, which serve to keep friends and to restrain enemies.

130 Do, and make it seen. Things pass not for what they are but for what they seem. To have worth and know how to show it is to have worth twice over. What is not seen is as if it were not. Reason itself does not receive its veneration where it does not look like reason. The deceived far outnumber the observant: deception prevails, and things are judged from outside. There are things that are very different from what they seem. A good exterior is the best recommendation of inner perfection.

131 Gallantry of character. Souls have their dash, a jauntiness of the spirit, and by its gallant acts a heart cuts a very fine figure. It is not found in all, for it presupposes magnanimity. Its first concern is to speak well of an enemy, and to act better. Its greatest luster lies in the occasions of revenge: it does not take them away but improves on them, turning revenge, when it is most victorious, into an unexpected generosity. It is politic too, and even the finery of reason of state. It never affects victories, because it affects nothing, and when merit wins them, ingenuousness hides them.

132 Make use of second counsel. Appealing for a review is security, especially where one’s satisfaction is not evident; take time, either to grant or to improve on one’s decision: new reasons offer themselves to confirm and strengthen one’s verdict. If it is a matter of giving, the gift is valued more for the good sense behind it than for the pleasure of its promptness; what was long desired was always valued more. If one must refuse, there is room for manner, and for ripening the No so that it is better seasoned; and most often, once that first heat of desire has passed, the slight of refusal is not felt afterward in cold blood. To one who asks in haste, grant late, for it is a trick to baffle attention.

133 “Better mad with everyone than sane alone,” say men of policy. For if all are mad, a man will lose nothing with any of them; and if good sense stands alone, it will be taken for madness: so much will it matter to follow the current. The greatest knowledge is sometimes not to know, or to affect not to know. One must live with others, and the ignorant are the majority. To live alone, one must have much of God or be wholly a beast.¹¹ But I would moderate the aphorism and say: better sane with the many than mad alone. Some want to be singular in chimeras.

134 Double the requisites of life. It is doubling one’s living. Dependence must not rest on one alone, nor be narrowed to a single thing, however singular. Everything should be doubled, and above all the sources of profit, of favor, of pleasure. The changeableness of the moon, which marks the boundary of permanence, runs through all things, and more so through those that depend on the human will, which is brittle. Let a reserve be set against frailty, and let it be a great rule of the art of living to double the means of good and of comfort: as nature doubled the most important and most exposed members, so let art double those on which we depend.

135 Have no spirit of contradiction, for that is loading oneself with folly and annoyance. Good sense will conspire against it. Raising difficulties about everything may well be ingenious, but obstinacy does not escape being foolish. Such people make guerrilla war of sweet conversation, and so are enemies more of their intimates than of those who have no dealings with them. In the most savory morsel the bone that sticks crosswise is felt most, and contradiction is just such a bone in good times; they are pernicious fools, who add the savage to the beast.

136 Grasp matters properly; take the pulse of business at once. Many go off either along the branches of useless reasoning or among the leaves of tiresome verbosity, without hitting on the substance of the case. They go a hundred times round a point, tiring themselves and tiring others, and never reach the center of what matters. It comes from confused understandings that cannot disentangle themselves. They spend their time and their patience on what they should have left alone, and afterward there is none left for what they left alone.

137 Let the wise man be sufficient to himself. He was all his own possessions, and carrying himself he carried everything.¹² If one universal friend is enough to make Rome and the whole rest of the universe, let a man be that friend to himself, and he will be able to live alone. Whom can he miss if there is no greater mind and no greater taste than his own? He will depend on himself alone, for it is supreme happiness to resemble the Supreme Being. He who can live alone in this way will have nothing of the brute, but much of the sage and all of God.

138 The art of letting things be. And more so the more turbulent the public sea, or the domestic one. There are whirlwinds in human dealings, tempests of the will; then it is good sense to withdraw to the safe harbor of letting things pass. Ills are often made worse by remedies. Let nature act in the one case, and morality in the other. The wise physician must know as much in order not to prescribe as to prescribe, and sometimes the art lies more in not applying remedies. Let lifting one’s hand and letting things settle be the way to calm vulgar whirlwinds; yielding to time now will be winning later. A spring is muddied by a little stirring, and will not grow clear again by being worked at, but by being left alone. There is no better remedy for disorders than to let them run their course, for so they fall of themselves.

139 Recognize unlucky days, for there are such: nothing will go right; and though the game may change, the bad luck does not. Two throws should be enough to recognize it and withdraw, noticing whether the day is one’s own or not. Even the understanding has its turns, for no one was wise at all hours. It is luck to hit on good reasoning, as it is to write a letter well. All perfections depend on season, and beauty is not always in its prime; discernment belies itself, now falling short, now overreaching; and everything, to turn out well, must have its day. Just as for some everything goes wrong, for others everything goes right, and with less effort. A man finds everything done for him: wit is in season, temperament in good temper, and all under a lucky star. Then one should make the most of it and not waste the smallest particle. But the judicious man will not pass final sentence that the day is bad because of one mishap he has seen, nor, on the contrary, that it is good, for the one may have been mere ill humor and the other luck.

140 Hit at once on the good in everything. It is the good fortune of good taste. The bee goes straight to the sweetness for its comb, and the viper to the bitterness for its venom. So with tastes: some go to the best, others to the worst. There is nothing that does not have something good in it, especially if it is a book, because of the thought in it. Yet the temperament of some is so graceless that among a thousand perfections they will hit on the one defect there may be, and that they censure and trumpet: collectors of the filth of wills and understandings, loading themselves with notes and defects, which is more a punishment of their bad choice than an employment of their subtlety. They lead a bad life, for they always feed on bitterness and make a pasture of imperfections. Happier is the taste of others who, among a thousand defects, will hit at once on a single perfection that chance let fall there.

141 Do not listen to oneself. It is little use pleasing oneself if one does not please others, and common contempt usually punishes private satisfaction. The man who is pleased with himself is in debt to everyone. Wanting to speak and to hear oneself does not go well; and if talking to oneself alone is madness, listening to oneself in front of others will be madness doubled. It is a failing of lords to speak with a refrain, the “Am I making sense?” and that “Eh?” that batters their listeners. At every sentence they prick up their ears for approval or flattery, trying the patience of good sense. The puffed-up also speak with an echo, and as their conversation goes on the chopines of pomp,¹³ at every word it calls for the tiresome assistance of a foolish “Well said!”

142 Never take the worse side out of stubbornness, because one’s opponent got ahead and chose the better. A man begins already defeated, and so will have to yield in disgrace. He will never take good revenge with the bad. It was his opponent’s cunning to get ahead to the better side, and his own folly to oppose him late with the worse. Those obstinate in deed are more committed than those obstinate in word, as much more as the risk of doing exceeds that of saying. It is the vulgarity of the stubborn to care nothing for truth, so as to contradict, nor for usefulness, so as to litigate. The attentive man is always on the side of reason, not of passion, either getting there first or improving his position afterward; for if his opponent is a fool, for that very reason he will change course and go over to the opposite side, and so worsen his position. To drive him from the better side the only remedy is to embrace it oneself, for his folly will make him leave it, and his stubbornness will be his downfall.

143 Do not fall into paradox in fleeing the vulgar; both extremes bring discredit. Every subject that is out of keeping with gravity is a branch of folly. The paradoxical is a certain deceit that wins applause at the start, astonishing by its novelty and its piquancy; but afterward, with the undeceiving of its turning out so badly, it is left much disgraced. It is a kind of trickery, and in political matters the ruin of states. Those who cannot reach the heroic, or dare not, by the road of virtue, take the road of paradox, astonishing fools and proving many sensible men right. It argues intemperance in one’s verdict, and that is why it is so opposed to prudence; and if it is sometimes not founded on the false, at least it is founded on the uncertain, at great risk to what matters.

144 Go in with another’s will in order to come out with one’s own. It is a stratagem for getting one’s way. Even in heavenly matters Christian teachers enjoin this holy cunning.¹⁴ It is an important dissimulation, for the imagined advantage serves as bait to catch a will: it seems to the other that his own will goes first, and it is only to open the way for someone else’s aim. One must never go in rashly, especially where there is a bottom of danger. With people whose first word is usually No, too, it is well to disguise the shot, so that the difficulty of granting is not noticed, much more when aversion is sensed. This advice belongs among those of second intention, all of which are of the quintessence of subtlety.

145 Do not show the sore finger, for everything will knock against it. Do not complain of it, for malice always strikes where weakness hurts. Taking offense will serve only to whet the sport of others. Ill will goes looking for the pretext to make one jump: it throws out darts to find where one is sensitive, and it will try a thousand ways until it reaches the quick. Let the attentive man never let on, nor reveal his ill, whether personal or inherited, for even fortune sometimes delights in wounding where it will hurt most. It always mortifies the quick; and so one must not reveal either what mortifies or what enlivens: the one so that it may end, the other so that it may last.

146 Look inside. Things are usually found to be very different from what they seemed; and ignorance that never got past the rind turns into undeceiving when it penetrates within. Falsehood is always first in everything; it drags fools along by continued vulgarity. Truth always arrives last, and late, limping along with time; the sensible reserve for it the other half of the faculty that our common mother wisely doubled.¹⁵ Deceit is very superficial, and the superficial come upon it at once. What is right lives withdrawn within, to be the more esteemed by its wise and discerning.

147 Do not be inaccessible. No one is so perfect that he does not sometimes need advice. He who will not listen is an incurable fool; the most independent must make room for friendly warning, and sovereignty must not exclude teachableness. There are men beyond remedy because they are inaccessible, who fall headlong because no one dares go up to stop them. The most self-sufficient must keep one door open to friendship, and it will be the door of help; there must be room for a friend to warn him freely, and even to rebuke him. Satisfaction must give the friend this authority, together with a high opinion of his faithfulness and prudence. Respect, and even credit, should not be made easy for everyone; but let him keep, in the closet of his reserve, the faithful mirror of a confidant to whom he owes, and in whom he values, correction in undeceiving.

148 Have the art of conversation, in which one shows oneself a person. In no human exercise is more attention required, for it is the most ordinary in life. Here a man loses or wins himself; for if care is needed to write a letter, which is conversation thought over and set down in writing, how much more in ordinary conversation, where discernment is put to a quick examination! Experts take the pulse of the spirit by the tongue, and on the strength of this the Sage said, “Speak, if you want me to know you.”¹⁶ Some hold that the art of conversation is to go without art, for it should be loose, like dress; this is understood among close friends, for when it is with persons who call for respect it must be more substantial, and show the great substance of the person. To succeed, one must adjust to the temperament and the wit of those taking part. One must not affect being a censor of words, or one will be taken for a grammarian, still less a prosecutor of arguments, or everyone will shun one’s company and bar one from conversation. Discernment in speaking matters more than eloquence.

149 Know how to shift ills onto another. To have shields against malevolence is a great trick of those who govern. It is born not of incapacity, as malice thinks, but of superior industry, to have someone on whom the censure for blunders and the common punishment of murmuring may fall. Not everything can turn out well, nor can everyone be pleased. Let there be, then, a man of straw for blunders,¹⁷ a butt for misfortunes, at the cost of his own ambition.

150 Know how to sell one’s wares. Their intrinsic goodness is not enough, for not everyone bites into the substance or looks within. Most people go where there is a crowd; they go because they see others going. It is a great part of the art to know how to give things credit: sometimes by praising them, for praise is a solicitor of desire; at other times by giving them a good name, which is a great way to exalt them, always belying any affectation. Reserving a thing for connoisseurs alone is a spur to everyone, for everyone thinks himself one, and if not, the deprivation will spur desire. Never give one’s subjects the credit of being easy or common, which is to vulgarize them rather than to make them accessible; everyone bites at the singular as more appetizing, both to taste and to wit.

Notes

1. 1. The old man of the sea in Greek myth, who changed into every shape to avoid being caught.

2. 2. Sayings such as “Nothing in excess” and “Measure is best” were attributed to the Seven Sages of Greece. Gracián does not say which sage he means.

3. 3. The Latin maxim summum ius, summa iniuria (Cicero, De officiis 1.33). The Spanish plays on derecho (straight, right) and tuerto (crooked, wrong).

4. 4. The hundred-eyed giant of Greek myth, some of whose eyes stayed open even in sleep.

5. 5. From Horace, Ars poetica 359: even good Homer sometimes nods.

6. 6. Spanish malilla, in the card games of the day a high trump that could stand for any card. Gracián means the man who is used for everything until he is worth nothing.

7. 7. Spanish residencia: the formal inquiry into an official’s conduct held in the Spanish empire when his term of office ended.

8. 8. The Spanish plays on casa (house) and caso (heed): el que quiere hacer casa hace caso.

9. 9. The Libro verde de Aragón, a sixteenth-century manuscript tracing the Jewish ancestry of Aragonese noble families, which became a byword for a book that drags up other people’s family stains.

10. 10. From the Latin maxim si non caste, tamen caute. The Spanish plays on casto (chaste) and cauto (cautious).

11. 11. Aristotle, Politics 1.2: whoever can live without a city is either a beast or a god.

12. 12. Said of Bias of Priene, one of the Seven Sages, who left his captured city empty-handed and declared that he carried all his possessions with him (Cicero, Paradoxa Stoicorum 1.8).

13. 13. Cork-soled platform shoes worn by Spanish women of the time to add to their height.

14. 14. Thought to refer to a maxim of spiritual direction attributed to Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), founder of the Jesuits: go in by the other’s door to come out by your own.

15. 15. The second ear. Alexander was said to cover one ear with his hand when hearing an accusation, keeping it for the accused (Plutarch, Life of Alexander 42).

16. 16. Source unknown; the saying is commonly attributed to Socrates.

17. 17. The Spanish testa de yerros twists testaferro, a front man who lends his name and takes the blame, by putting yerros (errors) in place of hierros (irons).