Balthazar Gracián (1601/01/08/ – 1658/12/06) happened to be on my slightly longer list of people worth studying. He wrote The Art of Worldly Wisdom, which I read several times in the 1960s. And I just read the first 50 of 302 statements with a paragraph of explication. It was shocking for me to realize how much his abstract thinking influenced my thinking but not so much my behavior. Looking back over my life at a few things I did or said that I should not have done or said makes me sad that I didn’t find the path that my Berkeley neighbor Kamala Harris did find and follow. 

Gracián was one of those people of the Renaissance that brought the European world out of the Dark Ages and back to thinking clearly instead of believing blindly. 


Other people’s quotes derived from Balthazar Gracián:

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.

Never contend with a man who has nothing to lose.

Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil.

Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.

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

The wise does at once what the fool does at last.

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

True knowledge lies in knowing how to live.

Never do anything when you are in a temper, for you will do everything wrong.

Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.

I spent my blogging time reading and thinking about Gracián’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom rather than writing this blog post, and I encourage you to do the same.