Aphorisms 151–225

151 Think ahead: today for tomorrow, and even for many days. The greatest foresight is to have hours set aside for it; for the forewarned there are no accidents, and for the prepared no tight spots. One must not wait for the moment of drowning to reason; it must be done beforehand; let the ripeness of second counsel forestall the crudest point. The pillow is a mute Sibyl, and sleeping on matters is worth more than lying awake under them. Some act and then think: that is looking for excuses rather than consequences. Others think neither before nor after. All of life should be thinking, to hit on the right course: second counsel and foresight give the means of living ahead.

152 Never keep company with someone who can make one look worse, whether by being more or by being less. What exceeds in perfection exceeds in esteem. The other will always play the first part, and he the second; and if any appreciation comes his way, it will be the other’s leftovers. The moon shines, while alone, among the stars; but when the sun comes out, she either does not appear or disappears. Never lean on anyone who eclipses one, only on someone who sets one off. In this way the discerning Fabulla of Martial¹ could seem beautiful, and she shone amid the ugliness or slovenliness of her maids. Nor should he risk a pain in the side, nor honor others at the cost of his own credit. To make himself, let him go with the eminent; once made, among the middling.

153 Avoid stepping in to fill great vacancies. And if one does commit oneself, let it be with the assurance of surpassing. One must double one’s worth to equal that of one’s predecessor. Just as it is a stratagem to have a successor who makes one missed, so it is a subtlety not to be eclipsed by the one who has finished. It is hard to fill a great void, because the past always seemed better; and even equality will not be enough, because the other is in possession as the first. It is necessary, then, to add gifts, to dislodge the other from his possession of the higher opinion.

154 Do not be easy either in believing or in loving. Maturity is known by slowness to believe: lying is very ordinary; let believing be extraordinary. The man who was lightly moved finds himself shamed afterward; but one must not let on that one doubts another’s word, which passes from discourtesy to insult, for it treats the speaker as either deceiver or deceived. And that is not even the greatest drawback; the greater is that not believing is a sign of lying, for the liar has two ills: he neither believes nor is believed. Suspension of judgment is sensible in the hearer, and let him defer, on faith, to the author who says: “Ease in loving is also a kind of imprudence”; for if one lies with words, one also lies with things, and this deceit in deeds is the more pernicious.

155 Art in giving way to passion. If possible, let prudent reflection forestall the vulgarity of impulse. It will not be difficult for one who is prudent. The first step in getting passionate is to notice that one is getting passionate, which is to enter in mastery of the feeling, gauging the need up to such and such a point of anger, and no further. With this superior reflection let him go into a rage and come out of it. Let him know how to stop well, and in time, for the hardest part of running is stopping. It is a great proof of judgment to keep one’s good sense in fits of madness. Every excess of passion degenerates from the rational; but with this masterly attention he will never trample on reason or step over the bounds of synderesis. To know how to break a passion one must always ride with the rein held in attention, and he will be the first sensible man on horseback, if not the last.²

156 Friends of choice. For they must be friends after examination by discernment and trial by fortune, graduates not only of the will but of the understanding. And though it is the most important success in life, it is the one least attended to with care. In some it is pushiness that does it, and in most, chance. A man is defined by the friends he has, for the wise man never agreed with the ignorant; but liking someone does not argue intimacy, which may come more from the pleasant time his charm affords than from confidence in his capacity. There are legitimate friendships and adulterous ones: the adulterous for delight, the legitimate for fruitfulness of success. Few are friends of the person, and many of the fortune. One friend’s good understanding is worth more than many others’ good will. Let there be choice, then, and not chance. A wise friend knows how to spare one sorrows, and a foolish friend brings them on. Nor wish one’s friends great fortune, if one does not want to lose them.

157 Do not be deceived about people, which is the worst and easiest deception. Better to be cheated in the price than in the goods; and there is nothing that more needs looking at from within. There is a difference between understanding things and knowing people; and it is great philosophy to grasp temperaments and distinguish the humors of men. One must have studied people as thoroughly as books.

158 Know how to use one’s friends. There is an art of discernment in this: some are good at a distance and others close at hand; and one who sometimes was not good for conversation is good for correspondence. Distance purifies some defects that were intolerable in presence. One must seek in friends not only pleasure but usefulness, for a friend must have the three qualities of the good, or, as others say, of being: one, good, and true;³ for a friend is all things. Few are good ones, and not knowing how to choose them makes them fewer. Knowing how to keep them is more than making them friends. Look for such as will last, and though at first they may be new, let it be satisfaction enough that they can become old. The very best are those with plenty of salt, though it takes a bushel of trial.⁴ There is no desert like living without friends. Friendship multiplies goods and shares out ills; it is the only remedy against adverse fortune and a relief to the soul.

159 Know how to put up with fools. The wise were always impatient, for he who increases knowledge increases impatience.⁵ Much knowledge is hard to satisfy. The greatest rule of life, according to Epictetus,⁶ is to bear, and to this he reduced half of wisdom. If all follies are to be tolerated, much patience will be needed. Sometimes we bear most from those on whom we most depend, which is important for the exercise of self-conquest. From forbearance is born priceless peace, which is the happiness of the earth. And the one who does not find in himself the spirit to bear should appeal to retirement into himself, if indeed he can tolerate even himself.

160 Speak with attention: with rivals, out of caution; with others, out of decency. There is always time to send a word off, but not to call it back. One should speak as in a will, for the fewer the words, the fewer the lawsuits. In what does not matter one should rehearse for what will. Secrecy has a shimmer of divinity. The man who is quick to speak is close to being overcome and convicted.

161 Know one’s sweet defects. The most perfect man does not escape some, and marries them or keeps them as mistresses. There are some in wit, and greater ones in the greater wit, or they are more noticed. Not because the man himself does not know them, but because he loves them. Two ills together: to be infatuated, and with vices. They are moles on perfection; they offend outsiders as much as they sound pleasant to their owners. Here is where one gallantly conquers oneself and gives this happiness to one’s other distinctions; everyone stumbles there, and when they should be celebrating the great good they admire, they stop where they find fault, making that ugly as a blemish on the other gifts.

162 Know how to triumph over rivalry and malevolence. Contempt, though prudent, is little now; gallantry is more. There is no applause enough for speaking well of one who speaks ill. There is no more heroic revenge than with merits and gifts, which conquer envy and torment it. Each success is another turn of the cords on ill feeling, and the glory of the one envied is the rival’s hell. This punishment is held the greatest: to make poison of happiness. The envious man does not die once, but as many times as the envied man lives amid cries of applause, the perennial fame of the one competing with the punishment of the other. The one is immortal for his glories and the other for his pains. The trumpet of fame, which sounds immortality for the one, proclaims death for the other, sentencing him to hang in the suspense of so envious a suspension.

163 Never, out of compassion for the unfortunate, incur the disfavor of the fortunate. What is misfortune for some is often good fortune for others, for one man would not be lucky if many others were not unlucky. It is the way of the unfortunate to win people’s goodwill, for that goodwill wants to make up with its useless favor for the disfavors of fortune; and it has sometimes been seen that one who in prosperity was hated by all was pitied by all in adversity: vengeance on the exalted turned into compassion for the fallen. But let the shrewd man watch how luck is shuffled. There are some who never go except with the unlucky, and side today, as unhappy, with the man they fled yesterday as fortunate. It sometimes argues nobility of nature, but not shrewdness.

164 Throw some things up into the air. To test acceptance, a seeing how they are received, especially those whose success and appeal are in doubt. It makes sure of coming out well, and leaves room either for commitment or for retreat. In this way wills are sounded, and the attentive man knows where he stands: the greatest precaution in asking, in desiring, and in governing.

165 Wage fair war. The sensible man may be forced to wage war, but not foul war. Each must act as who he is, not as he is forced to. Gallantry in rivalry wins applause. One must fight to win not only in power but in manner. To win basely is not victory but surrender. Generosity was always superiority. The decent man never uses forbidden weapons, and such are those of a friendship ended for a hatred begun, for confidence must not be used for revenge; everything that smells of treachery infects a good name. In persons bound by obligations the least atom of baseness is the more surprising; nobility and vileness must be far apart. Let him pride himself that, if gallantry, generosity, and fidelity were lost from the world, they would have to be sought in his breast.

166 Distinguish the man of words from the man of deeds. It is a singular precision, as is that of telling apart the friend, the person, or the post, which are very different. It is bad to have no good words and no bad deeds; worse, to have no bad words and no good deeds. One no longer eats words, which are wind, nor lives on courtesies, which are a courteous deceit. Catching birds with a light is the true dazzling. The vain are satisfied with wind; words must be pledges of deeds, and so must have their value. Trees that bear no fruit, only leaves, usually have no heart. It is well to know them, some for profit, others for shade.

167 Know how to help oneself. There is no better company in great straits than a stout heart; and when it weakens, it must be supplied from the parts near it. Troubles grow smaller for one who knows how to rely on himself. Let him not surrender to fortune, or she will end by becoming intolerable. Some help themselves little in their troubles and double them by not knowing how to bear them. The man who already knows himself comes to the aid of his weakness with consideration, and the discerning man comes out of everything victorious, even out of the stars.

168 Do not become a monster of folly. Such are all the vain, the presumptuous, the obstinate, the capricious, the self-persuaded, the extravagant, the posturers, the clowns, the novelty-mongers, the paradox-makers, the sectarians, and every kind of intemperate man; all of them monsters of absurdity. Every monstrosity of the spirit is more deformed than one of the body, because it falls short of a higher beauty. But who will correct so much common disorder? Where synderesis is lacking, no room is left for direction, and what should be a reflective observation of the mockery is an ill-conceived presumption of imagined applause.

169 Take more care not to miss once than to hit a hundred times. No one looks at the sun when it shines, and everyone when it is eclipsed. The vulgar tally will not count the hits but the misses. The bad are better known for being murmured about than the good for being applauded. Many were not known until they did wrong, and all one’s successes together are not enough to belie a single, tiny blemish. And let every man be undeceived: malevolence will note all his misses, but no hit.

170 Keep a reserve in all things. It is securing what matters. Not all one’s capital is to be spent, nor all one’s strength brought out every time; even in knowledge there should be something held back, which is a doubling of perfections. There must always be something to fall back on when in danger of coming out badly; relief does more than attack, because it shows courage and credit. The conduct of good sense was always on the safe side. And even in this sense that piquant paradox is true: the half is more than the whole.⁷

171 Do not squander favor. Great friends are for great occasions. Great confidence is not to be spent on small things, for that would be a waste of goodwill. The sacred anchor is always kept for the last danger.⁸ If much is used up on little, what will be left for later? There is nothing worth more than protectors, nor more precious today than favor: it makes and unmakes in the world, even giving wit or taking it away. Fortune has envied the wise for what nature and fame favored them with. Knowing how to keep people and hold on to them is more than keeping possessions.

172 Do not engage with one who has nothing to lose. It is fighting on unequal terms. The other goes in unencumbered, because he has lost even his shame; he has done with everything, has nothing more to lose, and so throws himself into every insolence. Priceless reputation must never be exposed to so cruel a risk; it cost many years to win, and comes to be lost in an instant over a point of touchiness: one slight freezes much shining sweat. A man bound by obligations is made cautious by having much to lose. Looking after his own credit, he looks after his opponent’s as well, and as he engages with attention, he proceeds with such restraint that he gives prudence time to withdraw in time and put his credit in safety. Not even by winning will he gain back what he has already lost by exposing himself to loss.

173 Do not be made of glass in one’s dealings. Still less in friendship. Some break very easily, revealing how little substance they have; they fill themselves with offense and others with annoyance. They show a disposition more tender than the apple of the eye, for it will not allow itself to be touched, in jest or in earnest. A mote offends it; there is no need now for a remark. Those who deal with them must go very carefully, always mindful of their delicacy; they humor their airs, for the least slight puts them out. These men are usually wrapped up in themselves, slaves of their pleasure, for which they will trample everything, idolaters of their petty honor. The lover’s disposition has half of the diamond in it, in lasting and in resisting.⁹

174 Do not live in a hurry. Knowing how to apportion things is knowing how to enjoy them. Many have life left over when their happiness has run out. They waste their pleasures, for they do not enjoy them, and afterward would like to go back, when they find themselves so far ahead. Postilions of life, who to the common running of time add their own temperamental haste. They would like to devour in one day what they will hardly be able to digest in a whole lifetime. They live ahead of themselves in their happiness, eat up the years to come, and, going in such haste, soon finish everything. Even in wanting to know there should be measure, so as not to know things badly known. There are more days than delights: in enjoying, slowly; in acting, quickly. Exploits are good when done; pleasures, bad when done with.

175 A man of substance. And he who is one takes no satisfaction in those who are not. Unhappy is the eminence that is not founded on substance. Not all who seem to be men are men: there are men of humbug, who conceive of chimeras and give birth to frauds; and there are others like them who support them and prefer the uncertain that a humbug promises, because it is much, to the certain that a truth assures, because it is little. In the end their caprices turn out badly, because they have no foundation of integrity. Only truth can give true reputation, and substance turns to profit. One fraud needs many others, and so the whole building is chimera, and as it is founded on air it must come to the ground: a disorder never reaches old age; seeing how much it promises is enough to make it suspect, just as what proves too much is impossible.

176 Know, or listen to one who knows. One cannot live without understanding, either one’s own or borrowed; but there are many who do not know that they do not know, and others who think they know when they do not. The failings of folly are incurable, for since the ignorant do not know themselves, neither do they seek what they lack. Some would be wise if they did not believe they were. Hence, though oracles of good sense are rare, they live idle, because no one consults them. Taking counsel neither diminishes greatness nor contradicts capacity. On the contrary, taking good counsel gives it credit. Let a man debate with reason so that misfortune does not do battle with him.

177 Avoid familiarity in one’s dealings. It is neither to be used nor allowed. The man who makes himself familiar at once loses the superiority his integrity gave him, and after it esteem. The stars, by not rubbing against us, keep their splendor. Divinity demands decorum; every human touch invites contempt. The more human things are had, the less they are held, because in communication the imperfections that reserve kept hidden are communicated too. With no one is it fitting to be familiar: not with superiors, because of the danger, nor with inferiors, because of the indecency; least of all with the base, who are bold out of folly, and not recognizing the favor done them, presume an obligation. Easiness is a branch of vulgarity.

178 Trust the heart. And more so when it has been proved. Never belie it, for it is often a prognosticator of what matters most: a household oracle. Many perished of what they feared; but what use was fearing it without remedying it? Some have very loyal hearts, an advantage of a superior nature, which always forewarns them and rings the alarm at misfortune so that it may be remedied. It is not good sense to go out to welcome ills, but it is to go out to meet them and defeat them.

179 Reticence is the seal of capacity. A breast without secrets is an open letter. Where there is depth, there are deep secrets, for there are great spaces and coves where things of moment sink. It comes from great self-mastery, and to conquer oneself in this is the true triumph. A man pays tribute to as many as he opens himself to.¹⁰ The health of prudence lies in inner temperance. The risks to reticence come from others’ probing: contradicting in order to twist, throwing darts to make even the most closed attentive man jump. Things that are to be done must not be said, and those that are to be said must not be done.

180 Never be ruled by what the enemy was going to do. The fool will never do what the sensible man judges he will, because he does not grasp what is fitting; nor will he if he is discerning, because he will want to belie the intention that has been seen through, and even forestalled. Matters must be thought through from both sides and turned over this way and that, laid out to drain on either slope. Verdicts vary: let impartiality be attentive, not so much to what will be as to what can be.

181 Without lying, do not tell all the truths. Nothing requires more tact than truth, which is a bleeding from the heart. As much is needed to know how to tell it as to know how to keep it quiet. With a single lie all the credit of integrity is lost. The deceived is taken for wanting and the deceiver for false, which is worse. Not all truths can be told: some because they matter to me, others because they matter to the other.

182 A grain of boldness with everyone is important good sense. One must moderate one’s notion of others so as not to think so highly of them as to fear them; never let imagination make the heart surrender. Some seem a great deal until one deals with them, but dealing with them has served more for undeceiving than for esteem. No one goes beyond the narrow limits of a man. Everyone has his “but,” some in wit, others in temperament. Rank gives apparent authority; personal authority seldom goes with it, for luck usually avenges the superiority of the office with the inferiority of the merits. Imagination always runs ahead and paints things much greater than they are. It conceives not only what is but what might be. Let reason correct it, so undeceived by experience. But neither must folly be bold nor virtue fearful. And if confidence has served simplicity, how much more worth and knowledge!

183 Do not cling to one’s views. Every fool is self-persuaded, and every self-persuaded man a fool; and the more erroneous his verdict, the greater his tenacity. Even when the evidence is clear, it is ingenuousness to yield, for the reason one had is not unknown, and the gallantry one shows is recognized. More is lost by clinging than can be gained by victory; it is defending not the truth but boorishness. There are iron heads, hard to convince, extreme beyond remedy; when the capricious joins the self-persuaded, they marry folly indissolubly. Firmness belongs in the will, not in the judgment. Though there are exceptional cases, so as not to let oneself be lost and be beaten twice: once in the verdict, again in the execution.

184 Do not be ceremonious, for even in a king affectation in this was remarked as an eccentricity. The punctilious man is tiresome, and there are nations touched with this delicacy. The garment of folly is sewn with these stitches: idolaters of their honor, who show that it is founded on little, since they fear that anything may offend it. It is good to look to one’s respect, but one should not be taken for a great master of compliments. It is true, though, that the man without ceremonies needs excellent virtues. Courtesy is neither to be affected nor despised. He who stops at points of punctilio does not show himself great.

185 Never stake one’s credit on a single trial, for if that one does not go well, the damage is irreparable. It very easily happens that one misses once, and especially the first time. A man is not always in form, which is why it is said, “to have one’s day.” Let the second, then, back up the first if it misses; and if it hits, the first will stand surety for the second. There must always be recourse to improvement and appeal to more. Things depend on contingencies, and on many, and so the good fortune of coming out well is rare.

186 Recognize defects, however authorized they may be. Let integrity not fail to recognize vice even when it is dressed in brocade; vice sometimes crowns itself with gold, but cannot for all that hide the iron.¹¹ It does not lose the slavery of its baseness though the nobility of the person belies it; vices may well be exalted, but they are not distinctions. Some see that a certain hero had a certain blemish, but do not see that he was not a hero because of it. The example of superiors is so eloquent that it persuades even to ugliness; flattery has sometimes even affected the ugliness of a face, not noticing that what is overlooked in greatness is abhorred in lowliness.

187 Do everything pleasant oneself; everything unpleasant through others. By the one, affection is won; by the other, malevolence is deflected. For great men there is greater pleasure in doing good than in receiving it, which is the happiness of their generosity. Rarely is displeasure given to another without one’s taking some, either from fellow feeling or from recoil. Superior causes do not act without reward or duress. Let good flow from one directly and ill indirectly. Let him have something for the blows of discontent to strike, and these are hatred and murmuring. Vulgar rage is usually like a dog’s, which, not knowing the cause of its hurt, turns on the instrument, and though the instrument is not chiefly to blame, it suffers the penalty for being nearest.

188 Bring something to praise. It is a credit to one’s taste, showing that it has been formed on what is very good, and that its esteem of what is present can be trusted. Whoever knew how to recognize perfection before will know how to esteem it later. It gives matter for conversation and for imitation, spreading welcome knowledge. It is a politic way of offering courtesy to the perfections before one. Others, on the contrary, always bring something to censure, flattering the present by despising the absent. It works with the superficial, who do not notice the trick of speaking very ill of some to others. Some make it their policy to esteem today’s mediocrities above yesterday’s excellences. Let the attentive man know these subtleties of approach, and let him not be dismayed by the exaggeration of the one nor puffed up by the flattery of the other; and let him understand that they behave in the same way in the one company as in the other: they change their tune and always adjust to the place they are in.

189 Make use of another’s want. For if it reaches desire, it is the most effective thumbscrew. Philosophers said it was nothing, and politicians that it was everything: the politicians knew it better. Some make the desire of others a step to reach their ends. They take advantage of the occasion, and with the difficulty of getting the thing they whet the appetite. They promise themselves more from the striving of passion than from the lukewarmness of possession; and as resistance grows, desire grows more passionate. A great subtlety in getting one’s way: keep people dependent.

190 Find consolation in everything. Even the useless have one in being eternal. There is no trouble without its comfort: fools have theirs in being lucky, and it is also said, “An ugly woman’s luck.”¹² To live long, the trick is to be worth little; the cracked jar is the one that never finishes breaking, and it annoys everyone by lasting. Fortune seems to envy the most important people, for she matches duration with the uselessness of the one sort and importance with the shortness of the other: all who matter will be missing, and the one of no use will remain forever, either because he seems so or because he really is so. It seems that luck and death agree to forget the unlucky man.

191 Do not be taken in by excessive courtesy, which is a kind of deceit. Some do not need the herbs of Thessaly¹³ to bewitch, for with nothing but the fine air of a doffed hat they enchant fools, I mean the vain. They set a price on honor and pay with the wind of a few good words. He who promises everything promises nothing, and promising is a slippery path for fools. True courtesy is a debt; affected courtesy, deceit, and more so the unaccustomed kind: it is not decency but dependency. They bow not to the person but to the fortune; and flattery bows not to the gifts it recognizes but to the profits it hopes for.

192 A man of great peace, a man of long life. To live, let live. The peaceful not only live, they reign. One must hear and see, but keep silent. A day without quarrels makes for a sleepy night. To live long and to live with pleasure is to live for two, and it is the fruit of peace. He has everything who cares nothing for what does not concern him. There is nothing more senseless than to take everything seriously. It is equal folly for a thing that does not touch a man to go to his heart, and for one that does matter to him not to get past his teeth.

193 Watch out for the man who goes in with another’s will to come out with his own. There is no defense against cunning like being on the lookout. Against the knowing, a quick understanding. Some make their own business look like someone else’s, and without the key to intentions a man finds himself at every step committed to pulling another’s profit out of the fire at the cost of his own hand.

194 Have a sensible idea of oneself and one’s affairs. Especially at the beginning of life. Everyone thinks highly of himself, and most of all those who are least. Each dreams up his fortune and imagines himself a prodigy. Hope commits itself recklessly, and afterward experience fulfills nothing; the undeceiving of true reality becomes a torment to one’s vain imagination. Let good sense correct such blunders, and though it may desire the best, it must always expect the worst, so as to take with equanimity whatever comes. It is skill to aim somewhat higher in order to adjust the shot, but not so much as to miss wildly. On starting in one’s posts this reform of one’s notion is necessary, for presumption without experience usually runs wild. There is no more universal medicine for all follies than sense. Let each man know the sphere of his activity and station, and he will be able to bring his notion into line with reality.

195 Know how to esteem. There is no one who cannot be another’s master in something, nor anyone who does not surpass the one who surpasses him. Knowing how to make the most of each person is useful knowledge. The wise man esteems everyone because he recognizes the good in each and knows what it costs to do things well. The fool despises everyone out of ignorance of the good and choice of the worst.

196 Know one’s star. No one is so helpless as not to have one, and if he is unlucky, it is because he does not know it. Some have the ear of princes and the powerful without knowing how or why, except that their own luck smoothed the way to favor; all that is left for industry is to help it. Others find themselves in the goodwill of the wise. One man was more welcome in one nation than in another, and better liked in this city than in that. One also meets with more good fortune in one post and station than in others, and all this with equal, even identical, merits. Luck shuffles how and when it pleases. Let each man know his own, as well as his Minerva,¹⁴ for on this depends losing or winning. Let him know how to follow it and help it; let him not change them for others, for that would be to miss the north to which the nearby Horn calls him.¹⁵

197 Never get tangled up with fools. He is a fool who does not recognize them, and more so he who, having recognized them, does not discard them. They are dangerous for casual dealings and pernicious for confidences; and though for a time their own misgivings and the care of others may restrain them, in the end they do the foolish thing or say it; and if they took long, it was to make it more solemn. He can hardly help another’s credit who has none of his own. They are most unfortunate, which is the excrescence on folly, and the one sticks to the other. Only one thing about them is less bad, and it is this: although the sensible are of no use to them, they are of much use to the wise, either as information or as warning.

198 Know how to transplant oneself. There are nations whose people must change their ground to be valued, especially in great posts. Homelands are stepmothers to their own eminences: envy reigns in them as in its native soil, and they remember the imperfections with which a man began more than the greatness he has reached. A pin could win esteem by passing from one world to another, and a bit of glass brought the diamond into contempt because it traveled. Everything foreign is esteemed, either because it came from far away or because it is had ready made and in its perfection. We have seen persons who were once the contempt of their corner and today are the honor of the world, esteemed by their own people and by strangers: by their own people because they see them from afar, by strangers because they come from afar. He who knew the statue as a trunk in the orchard will never properly venerate it on the altar.

199 Know how to make a place for oneself sensibly, not by intruding. The true road to esteem is that of merits, and if industry is founded on worth, it is a short cut to reaching it. Integrity alone is not enough; solicitation alone is unworthy, for things arrive so muddied that they disgust reputation. It lies in a middle way: deserving, and knowing how to make one’s entrance.

200 Have something to desire, so as not to be happily miserable. The body breathes and the spirit yearns. If everything were possession, everything would be undeceiving and discontent. Even in the understanding there must always be something left to know, on which curiosity can feed. Hope gives life: surfeits of happiness are deadly. In rewarding, it is skillful never to satisfy. If there is nothing to desire, everything is to be feared: an unhappy happiness; where desire ends, fear begins.

201 All who look like fools are fools, and half of those who do not. Folly has made off with the world, and if there is any wisdom, it is foolishness beside the wisdom of heaven;¹⁶ but the greatest fool is the one who does not think himself one and defines all the others. To be wise it is not enough to seem so, still less to seem so to oneself: he knows who thinks he does not know, and he does not see who does not see that others see. Though the whole world is full of fools, there is none who thinks himself one, or even suspects it.

202 Sayings and doings make a consummate man. One must speak what is very good and do what is very honorable: the one is the perfection of the head, the other of the heart, and both are born of superiority of spirit. Words are the shadow of deeds: words are the females, deeds the males. It matters more to be celebrated than to be a celebrator. Saying is easy and doing hard. Exploits are the substance of living, and maxims the ornament. Eminence in deeds lasts; in words it passes. Actions are the fruit of attention: sayings wise, deeds heroic.

203 Know the eminent men of one’s century. They are not many: one phoenix in a whole world, one Great Captain,¹⁷ one perfect orator, one wise man in a whole century, one eminent king in many. Mediocrities are ordinary in number and in esteem; eminences are rare in everything, because they demand completeness of perfection, and the more sublime the category, the more difficult the extreme. Many have taken from Caesar and Alexander the title of “the Great,” but emptily, for without the deeds the word is nothing but a little air: there have been few Senecas, and fame has celebrated only one Apelles.¹⁸

204 The easy must be undertaken as if difficult, and the difficult as if easy. The easy, so that confidence does not grow careless; the difficult, so that diffidence does not lose heart. Nothing more is needed for a thing not to be done than to take it as done; and, on the contrary, diligence levels impossibility. Great undertakings should not even be thought over; it is enough to take them on, lest the difficulty, once noticed, cause hesitation.

205 Know how to play with contempt. It is a trick for getting things to scorn them. They are not commonly found when sought, and afterward, when one is not looking, they come to hand. As all things here below are shadows of the eternal, they share that property of the shadow: they flee whoever follows them and pursue whoever flees them. Contempt is also the most politic revenge. A unique maxim of the wise: never defend oneself with the pen, which leaves a trace and turns out to be more glory for rivalry than punishment for insolence. The cunning of the unworthy: to set themselves against great men so as to be celebrated indirectly, when they did not deserve it directly; for we would not know of many if their excellent opponents had not taken notice of them. There is no revenge like oblivion, which is to bury them in the dust of their nothingness. Reckless men presume to make themselves eternal by setting fire to the wonders of the world and of the ages.¹⁹ The art of reforming gossip: take no notice; contesting it does harm; and giving it credit brings discredit. And it pleases one’s rivals, for even that shadow of a blemish tarnishes the greatest perfection, if it does not altogether darken it.

206 Let it be known that there is a vulgar crowd everywhere: in Corinth itself,²⁰ in the most select family. Everyone has experience of it within the doors of his own house. But there is the vulgar, and the doubly vulgar, which is worse: the particular kind has the same properties as the common, like the pieces of a broken mirror, and is even more harmful: it talks foolishly and censures absurdly; a great disciple of ignorance, godfather of folly, and ally of gossip. No attention is to be paid to what it says, still less to what it thinks. It matters to know it so as to be free of it, either as a part of it or as its object. For any folly is vulgarity, and the vulgar crowd is made up of fools.

207 Use self-control. One must keep most on top of things in the unforeseen. The impulses of passion are the slippery places of good sense, and there lies the risk of losing oneself. A man goes further in one instant of fury or delight than in many hours of indifference. Sometimes he runs a short way only to be red-faced for the rest of his life. Another’s cunning intention lays these temptations for prudence, to spy out the land, or the spirit. It uses such thumbscrews of secrets, which often drain the greatest capital. Let self-control be the counterstratagem, especially in sudden moments. Much reflection is needed to keep a passion from bolting, and he is very sensible who is sensible on horseback. He who perceives the danger goes carefully. The word that seems light to the one who throws it seems heavy to the one who receives it and weighs it.

208 Do not die of the fool’s disease. Commonly the wise die lacking good sense, and fools, on the contrary, stuffed with advice. To die of folly is to die of too much reasoning. Some die because they feel, and others live because they do not feel. And so some are fools because they do not die of feeling, and others are fools because they do. A fool is he who dies of understanding too much. So some die of understanding, and others live by not understanding; but though many die of folly, few fools die.

209 Free oneself of common follies. It is a very special good sense. They are strongly entrenched by custom, and some who did not yield to particular ignorance did not know how to escape the common kind. It is vulgarity that no one is content with his lot, even the greatest, nor discontented with his wit, even the worst. All covet the happiness of others, discontented with their own. People of today, too, praise the things of yesterday, and those here the things over there. Everything past seems better, and everything distant is more esteemed. He who laughs at everything is as much a fool as he who frets over everything.

210 Know how to handle the truth. It is dangerous, but the decent man cannot help telling it: there artifice is needed. The skillful physicians of the spirit invented the way of sweetening it, for when it touches on undeceiving it is the quintessence of bitterness. Good manner here makes use of its skill: with one and the same truth one man flatters and another bludgeons. One must speak to the present in terms of the past. With a quick understanding it is enough to show the edge of the card; and when nothing is enough, it is time to fall silent. Princes are not to be cured with bitter things; for that there is the art of gilding undeceptions.

211 In Heaven all is contentment; in Hell all is sorrow. In the world, being in between, both. We are between two extremes, and so we share in both. Lots alternate: neither should everything be happiness, nor everything adversity. This world is a zero: by itself it is worth nothing; joined with Heaven, much. Indifference to its changes is good sense, and nothing comes as new to the wise. Our life goes on thickening its plot like a comedy, and at the end it comes to be untangled. Attention, then, to ending well.

212 Always keep the last tricks of the art in reserve. That is what great masters do, who use their subtlety in the very act of teaching it. One must always remain superior, and always master. One must use art in imparting the art; the fountain of teaching must never be drained, any more than that of giving. In this way reputation and dependence are preserved. In pleasing and in teaching one must observe that great lesson of always feeding admiration and advancing perfection. Reserve in all matters was a great rule of living and of winning, and above all in the most sublime posts.

213 Know how to contradict. It is a great trick of probing, not to commit oneself but to commit the other. It is the one thumbscrew that makes the feelings jump. Lukewarmness in believing is an emetic for secrets, the key to the most locked breast. The double probe of will and judgment is made with great subtlety. A shrewd contempt for another’s mysterious word hunts down the deepest secrets, and gently brings them up mouthful by mouthful until they reach the tongue and fall into the nets of artful deceit. Restraint in the attentive man makes the other cast off his own reserve and reveals his feeling, which otherwise was the inscrutable heart. An affected doubt is the subtlest picklock of curiosity, for learning all it wants. And even for learning it is the pupil’s trick to contradict the master, who then commits himself with greater effort to explaining and grounding the truth; so that moderate opposition gives occasion for complete teaching.

214 Do not make two follies out of one. It is very ordinary, in order to patch up one, to commit four others. To excuse one absurdity with a greater one is of the breed of lying, or lying is of the breed of folly, for to sustain one it needs many. The defense of a bad case was always worse than the case; worse than the ill itself is not knowing how to disguise it. It is the toll of imperfections that they put out many others at interest. The wisest man may fall into one lapse, but not into two; and in passing, not to stay.

215 Watch out for the man who comes with a second intention. It is the trick of the man of business to put the will off its guard in order to attack it, for it is vanquished as soon as it is convinced. Such men hide their aim in order to achieve it, and put it second so that in execution it may be first: the shot is made sure in what goes unnoticed. But let attention not sleep when intention is so wakeful; and if intention makes itself second in order to dissemble, let attention make itself first in order to recognize it. Let caution notice the artifice with which he approaches, and mark the feints he throws out on his way to coming to rest at the point of his claim. He proposes one thing and aims at another, and turns back with subtlety to hit the target of his intention. Let a man know, then, what he is granting, and sometimes it will be well to let it be understood that he has understood.

216 Have the gift of expression. It is not only freedom but ease in one’s thought. Some conceive well and give birth badly, for without clarity the children of the soul, thoughts and decisions, do not come to light. Some have the capacity of those jars that take in much and give out little. Others, on the contrary, say even more than they think. What resolution is in the will, expression is in the understanding: two great eminences. Clear wits are applauded; confused ones were venerated for not being understood, and sometimes obscurity is advisable so as not to be vulgar; but how will others form an idea of what they hear from such men, if no idea in their own minds answers to what they say?

217 One must neither love nor hate forever. Trust today’s friends as tomorrow’s enemies, and the worst ones; and since it happens in reality, let it happen in foresight. Weapons are not to be given to deserters from friendship, who wage the fiercest war with them. With enemies, the opposite: always an open door to reconciliation, and let it be the door of gallantry, which is the safest. Revenge taken earlier has sometimes tormented later, and the pleasure of the ill turn done to the other turns into sorrow.

218 Never act out of stubbornness, but out of attention. All stubbornness is an abscess,²¹ a great daughter of passion, which never did anything right. There are some who reduce everything to skirmishing; highwaymen of human dealings, they would like everything they do to be a victory; they do not know how to proceed peacefully. These are pernicious in command and government, because they make a faction of government, and enemies of those they should make sons. They want to arrange everything by scheming and achieve it as the fruit of their artifice; but once others discover their paradoxical humor, they at once take aim at them and try to hinder their chimeras, and so they achieve nothing. They carry off surfeits of annoyance, and everyone helps their vexation along. Such men have an injured verdict, and sometimes a damaged heart. The way to deal with such monsters is to flee to the antipodes, for the barbarism of the people there will be easier to bear than the ferocity of these.

219 Do not be taken for a man of artifice. Though one can no longer live without it. Prudent rather than cunning. Plainness in dealings pleases everyone, but not everyone wants it in his own house. Let sincerity not go to the extreme of simplicity, nor shrewdness to that of cunning. Let a man rather be venerated as wise than feared as calculating. The sincere are loved, but deceived. Let the greatest artifice be to hide it, for it is taken for deceit. Plainness flourished in the age of gold; malice flourishes in this age of iron. The credit of a man who knows what he must do is honorable and inspires confidence, but that of an artful man is sophistical and breeds suspicion.

220 When one cannot wear the lion’s skin, wear the fox’s.²² Knowing how to yield to the times is to prevail. He who gets his way never loses reputation. Where strength is lacking, skill. By one road or the other: the king’s highway of courage or the short cut of artifice. Skill has accomplished more things than strength, and the wise have more often defeated the brave than the other way round. When the thing cannot be had, contempt comes in.

221 Do not be quarrelsome, either in getting oneself entangled or in entangling others. There are men who are stumbling blocks to decorum, their own as well as others’, always on the brink of folly. They clash very easily and break off unhappily. They cannot get through a day without a hundred annoyances. Their humor runs against the grain, and so they contradict everyone and everything. They have put on their judgment like shoes on the wrong feet, and so they condemn everything. But the greatest testers of good sense are those who do nothing well and speak ill of everything, for there are many monsters in the broad country of absurdity.

222 The restrained man: evidence of a prudent one. The tongue is a wild beast, and once it is let loose, it is very hard to chain again. It is the pulse of the soul, by which the wise know its disposition. Here the attentive feel the movement of the heart. The trouble is that the one who should be most self-controlled is least so. The wise man spares himself annoyances and entanglements, and shows how much his own master he is. He proceeds circumspectly: Janus in weighing both sides, Argus in verifying. Momus would have done better to miss eyes in the hands than a little window in the breast.²³

223 Do not be too peculiar, either from affectation or from inattention. Some have a notable peculiarity, with manic actions that are defects rather than distinctions. And just as some are well known for some singular ugliness in the face, so these are known for some excess in their bearing. Making oneself peculiar serves only as a stigma, with an absurd particularity that stirs laughter in some and annoyance in others by turns.

224 Know how to take things. Never against the grain, even if that is how they come. Everything has a right side and a wrong side. The best and most favorable thing wounds if it is taken by the blade. On the contrary, the most repugnant defends if it is taken by the hilt. Many things were causes of grief that would have been causes of contentment if their advantages had been considered. In everything there are advantages and disadvantages: the skill lies in knowing how to hit on what serves. One and the same thing shows very different reflections when looked at in different lights: let it be looked at in the light of happiness. One must not switch the bridles of good and ill. From this it comes that some find contentment in everything, and others sorrow. A great defense against the reverses of fortune, and a great rule of life for every time and every post.

225 Know one’s chief defect. No one lives without it, the counterweight of his outstanding gift; and if inclination favors it, it takes control like a tyrant. Let a man begin to make war on it, proclaiming his vigilance against it, and let the first step be the manifesto, for once it is known it will be conquered, especially if the man concerned forms the same idea of it as those who notice it. To be master of oneself one must go after oneself. Once this ringleader of imperfections has surrendered, all the rest will come to an end.

Notes

1. 1. A woman in Martial’s Epigrams (8.79) who kept only old or ugly friends about her so as to look beautiful.

2. 2. The Spanish proverb runs: no man is sensible on horseback.

3. 3. The scholastic transcendentals, the properties held to belong to every being: unity, goodness, and truth.

4. 4. The old saying that one must eat many measures of salt with a man to know him (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 8; Cicero, On Friendship 19). Spanish salado, salty, also means witty; a fanega is a measure of grain.

5. 5. Twisting Ecclesiastes 1:18, “he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” The Spanish rhymes ciencia (knowledge) with impaciencia.

6. 6. The Stoic philosopher (first to second century), who according to Aulus Gellius (Attic Nights 17.19) summed up the conduct of life in two words: bear and forbear.

7. 7. Hesiod, Works and Days 40: fools do not know how much more the half is than the whole.

8. 8. The largest anchor on a ship, let down only in the last extremity; since antiquity a figure for one’s final resource.

9. 9. Spanish amante (lover) is half of diamante (diamond).

10. 10. Spanish pecho means both “breast” and a tribute paid by commoners: to open one’s breast to someone is to become his tributary.

11. 11. Spanish yerro (error) sounds like hierro (iron), so the line sets the gold crown against base iron.

12. 12. The Spanish proverb ventura de fea: plain women have better luck than pretty ones.

13. 13. Thessaly, in northern Greece, was famous in antiquity for witches and love potions.

14. 14. The Roman goddess of wisdom; here, as elsewhere in Gracián, a man’s natural talent.

15. 15. Spanish bocina, the Horn: the constellation of the Little Bear, named for its shape, by whose star sailors found the north.

16. 16. Echoing 1 Corinthians 3:19: “the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.”

17. 17. Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba (1453–1515), the Spanish general who led Isabella’s armies in the war of Granada and in Italy, called el Gran Capitán.

18. 18. The court painter of Alexander the Great (fourth century BC), held to be the greatest painter of antiquity.

19. 19. Herostratus, who in 356 BC set fire to the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the seven wonders, so that his name would be remembered.

20. 20. The rich trading city of ancient Greece, famous for luxury and refinement.

21. 21. The Spanish rhymes tema (stubbornness) with postema (abscess).

22. 22. Where the lion’s skin will not reach, it must be pieced out with the fox’s: a saying of the Spartan general Lysander (Plutarch, Life of Lysander 7).

23. 23. Janus was the Roman god with two faces, Argus the hundred-eyed giant of Greek myth, and Momus the god of faultfinding, who blamed the maker of man for not setting a window in his breast through which his thoughts could be seen.