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Index
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Chronology
Introduction
Gracián’s Life and Times
A Pocket Oracle: Style and Themes
An art of prudence
Notes
Further Reading
Translator’s Note
The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence
1: All things are now at their peak, above all being a true individual
2: Inclination and ingenuity
3: In your affairs, create suspense
4: Knowledge and courage contribute in turn to greatness
5: Make people depend on you
6: The height of perfection
7: Avoid outdoing your superior
8: Imperturbability, the spirit’s most sublime quality
9: Belie your national defects
10: Fortune and fame
11: Deal with people from whom you can learn
12: Nature and art, material and craft
13: Declared and undeclared intentions
14: Reality and manner
15: Have intelligent support
16: Knowledge and good intention
17: Vary your procedure
18: Application and capability
19: Don’t arouse excessive expectations from the start
20: A person born in the right century
21: The art of being lucky
22: A person with wide-ranging knowledge
23: Have no blemish
24: Temper your imagination
25: A word to the wise is enough
26: Find everyone’s weak spot
27: Value intensiveness more than extensiveness
28: Vulgar in nothing
29: A person of integrity
30: Don’t make a profession out of discredited occupations
31: Know the fortunate, to befriend them, and the unfortunate, to shun them
32: Be known for pleasing people
33: Know how to leave things to one side
34: Know your key quality
35: Think things through
36: Size up fortune
37: Recognize and know how to use insinuations
38: Quit whilst fortune is smiling
39: Recognize things at their peak, at their best, and know how to take advantage of them
40: Be in people’s good graces
41: Never exaggerate
42: Natural command
43: Think with the few and speak with the many
44: Affinity with great men
45: Caution – use it, but don’t abuse it
46: Conquer your aversions
47: Avoid getting embroiled
48: Real depths make a true person
49: A judicious and observant person
50: Never lose your self-respect
51: Choose well
52: Never lose your composure
53: Diligent and intelligent
54: Show your mettle, but wisely
55: Bide your time
56: Quick and impulsive actions
57: Those who think things through are more secure
58: Know how to adapt yourself
59: Leave a good impression
60: Good judgement
61: Eminence in what’s best
62: Work with good tools
63: The excellence of being first
64: Know how to avoid giving yourself grief
65: Outstanding good taste
66: Make sure of a successful outcome
67: Choose occupations that win praise
68: Make others understand
69: Don’t give in to vulgar humours
70: Know how to refuse
71: Don’t be uneven, or inconsistent in your actions
72: A resolute person
73: Know how to be evasive
74: Don’t be impossible to deal with
75: Choose a heroic model
76: Don’t always be joking
77: Know how to be all things to all people
78: Skill in embarking on something
79: A genial temperament
80: Take care when gathering information
81: Dazzle anew
82: Take neither the good nor the bad to extremes
83: Allow yourself some minor slip
84: Know how to use your enemies
85: Don’t be the wild card
86: Forestall malicious gossip
87: Culture and refinement
88: Let your manner be lofty
89: Understand yourself
90: The art of living long: live well
91: Only act if prudence has no doubts
92: Exceptional sense
93: A universal person
94: Unfathomable abilities
95: Know how to maintain expectation
96: On moral sense
97: Make and keep your reputation
98: Conceal your wishes
99: Reality and appearance
100: A man free from illusion
101: Half the world is laughing at the other half, and all are fools
102: A stomach for great mouthfuls of good fortune
103: Each with the dignity proper to their status
104: Understand what different jobs entail
105: Don’t be tedious
106: Don’t vaunt your good fortune
107: Don’t appear self-satisfied
108: A short cut to being a true person
109: Don’t be condemnatory
110: Don’t hang around to be a setting sun
111: Have friends
112: Win affection
113: In good fortune prepare for bad
114: Never compete
115: Get used to the bad temperaments of those you deal with
116: Always deal with upstanding people
117: Never talk about yourself
118: Gain a reputation for courtesy
119: Don’t make yourself disliked
120: Live according to common practice
121: Don’t make a great deal over nothing
122: Mastery in words and deeds
123: A person without affectation
124: Be desired
125: Don’t keep a tally of ignominious actions
126: The fool is not someone who does something foolish, but someone who, once this is done, doesn’t know how to hide it
127: Nonchalant grace in everything
128: A sublime spirit
129: Never complain
130: Do, and appear to do
131: A gallant nature
132: Reconsider things
133: Better mad with the crowd than sane all alone
134: Have double of life’s necessities
135: Don’t be given to contradiction
136: Fully understand matters
137: The wise person should be self-sufficient
138: The art of leaving things alone
139: Know your unlucky days
140: Immediately find the good in everything
141: Don’t enjoy the sound of your own voice
142: Don’t support the worse side out of stubbornness
143: Don’t go against existing belief to avoid seeming vulgar
144: Go in supporting the other person’s interests so as to come out achieving your own
145: Don’t expose your sore finger
146: Look beneath the surface
147: Don’t be inaccessible
148: Possess the art of conversation
149: Know how to deflect trouble on to someone else
150: Know how to sell your wares
151: Think ahead
152: Never be associated with someone who can cast you in a poor light
153: Avoid stepping into great men’s shoes
154: Don’t be too quick to believe or to bestow affection
155: Skill in controlling your passions
156: Choose your friends
157: Don’t be mistaken about people
158: Know how to use your friends
159: Know how to suffer fools
160: Talk circumspectly
161: Know your pet failings
162: Know how to triumph over envy and malevolence
163: Never let compassion for the unfortunate earn you the disfavour of the fortunate
164: Test the waters
165: Fight a clean fight
166: Differentiate between a sayer and a doer
167: Know how to help yourself
168: Don’t become a monster of stupidity
169: Take more care not to fail once than to succeed a hundred times
170: Always have something in reserve
171: Don’t waste favours
172: Don’t engage with someone with nothing to lose
173: Don’t be brittle as glass in dealing with people
174: Don’t live in a hurry
175: A person of substance
176: Either know, or listen to someone who does
177: Avoid familiarity when dealing with people
178: Believe your heart
179: Reticence is the stamp of true ability
180: Never be ruled by what you think your enemy should do
181: Without lying, don’t reveal every truth
182: A dash of boldness in everything is an important element of good sense
183: Don’t hold opinions doggedly
184: Don’t stand on ceremony
185: Don’t stake your reputation on a single throw
186: Recognize faults
187: Anything popular, do yourself; anything unpopular, use others to do it
188: Be ready to praise
189: Take advantage of what a person lacks
190: Find the consolation in everything
191: Don’t be pleased with excessive courtesy
192: A truly peaceable person is a person with a long life
193: Beware the person who goes in supporting someone else’s interests so as to come out achieving their own
194: Have a realistic idea of yourself and your affairs
195: Know how to appreciate
196: Know your lucky star
197: Never be hindered by fools
198: Know how to transplant yourself
199: Know how to garner esteem – wisely, not pushily
200: Have something still to desire
201: All those who appear fools are, along with half of those who don’t
202: Words and deeds make a perfect man
203: Know the great people of your time
204: Undertake what’s easy as if it were hard, and what’s hard as if it were easy
205: Know how to use scorn
206: Realize that the vulgar are everywhere
207: Practise self-restraint
208: Don’t suffer from a fool’s sickness
209: Free yourself from common stupidity
210: Know how to use the truth
211: In heaven, everything is good; in hell, everything bad
212: Always keep to yourself the ultimate tricks of your trade
213: Know how to contradict
214: Don’t turn one stupid mistake into two
215: Beware the person with hidden intentions
216: Speak clearly
217: Neither love nor hate forever
218: Don’t act obstinately, but with care
219: Don’t be known for artifice
220: When you can’t wear a lion’s skin, wear a fox’s
221: Don’t be annoyingly impetuous
222: A person who is cautious is clearly prudent
223: Don’t be very idiosyncratic
224: Know how to take things
225: Know your sovereign fault
226: Be careful to oblige
227: Don’t believe your first impression
228: Don’t be a scandalmonger
229: Know how to divide up your life wisely
230: Open your eyes in time
231: Never let something be seen half done
232: Be a little practical
233: Don’t get other people’s taste wrong
234: Don’t entrust your reputation to another without having their honour as security
235: Know how to ask
236: Grant something as a favour before it has to be given as a reward
237: Never share secrets with superiors
238: Know what you lack
239: Don’t be too sharp
240: Know how to appear the fool
241: Take a joke, but don’t make someone the butt of one
242: Carry things through
243: Don’t be completely dove-like
244: Know how to put someone under an obligation
245: Sometimes reason in a singular and out-of-the-ordinary way
246: Don’t offer an apology to someone who hasn’t asked for one
247: Know a little more and live a little less
248: Don’t be carried away by the last person you meet
249: Don’t start to live just when life has to end
250: When should you reason in reverse?
251: Human means must be sought as if there were no divine ones, and divine ones as if there were no human ones
252: Neither entirely selfish, nor entirely altruistic
253: Don’t express an idea too plainly
254: Don’t dismiss something bad because it’s minor
255: Know how to do good
256: Always be forearmed
257: Never break off relations
258: Look for someone to help you shoulder misfortunes
259: Anticipate offences and turn them into favours
260: You will never belong entirely to someone else nor they to you
261: Don’t persist in folly
262: Know how to forget
263: Many pleasurable things don’t have to belong to you
264: Don’t have careless days
265: Know how to really challenge your subordinates
266: Don’t be bad by being totally good
267: Silken words, and a mild nature
268: The sensible person does at the beginning what the fool does in the end
269: Take advantage of your novelty
270: Don’t be the only person to condemn what pleases many
271: Someone who knows little should keep to what’s safest in any profession
272: When selling, let your price be that there is no price
273: Understand the temperaments of those you deal with
274: Have appeal
275: Go with the flow, but not beyond decency
276: Know how to renew your character using nature and art
277: Show yourself off
278: Avoid being noted
279: Don’t respond to contradiction
280: An honourable person
281: The approval of knowledgeable people
282: Use absence
283: Be sensibly inventive
284: Don’t meddle
285: Don’t perish from someone else’s misfortune
286: Don’t allow yourself to be under an obligation, either wholly or to everyone
287: Never act when passions are inflamed
288: Live as circumstances demand
289: The greatest stigma for a person
290: To combine esteem and affection is a real blessing
291: Know how to appraise
292: Let your natural talents overcome the demands of the job
293: On maturity
294: Moderation in forming opinions
295: Heroic, not histrionic
296: A man of many, and truly majestic, qualities
297: Act as though always on view
298: Three things make a prodigy
299: Leave people hungry
300: In a word, a saint
Notes
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