A guide for worldly success

7

Avoid victories over your superior. Every triumph is odious and if it is over your superior it is either foolish or disastrous. Superiority is invariably disliked, more especially by those who are themselves in high positions. Ordinary gifts can usually be concealed by the exercise of care: good looks, for example, can be belied by slovenliness. You may well find some people who may be willing to grant you pride of place in good fortune and character; but none in understanding, least of all a ruler: this attribute is kingly, and it follows that any offence against it ranks as lese-majeste. Sovereigns are sovereigns, and like to be so in respect of the most regal of all qualities. Rulers like to be assisted but not to be outshone, and they prefer that advice should appear to be rather a reminder of something they have forgotten than a light upon something that is beyond their understanding. The stars set us a happy example of this tactfulness; for although they are children of the sun and shine brilliantly, they never venture to vie with him in splendour.

116

Always deal with men of honour. You can enter into mutually binding agreements with them. Their word is itself the best guarantee of their conduct, even in disputes, for they act according to their nature; and it is better to fight with men of honour than to triumph over rogues. You cannot have satisfactory dealings with worthless people because they do not regard themselves as bound by the laws of honour; thus there is no true friendship among rogues; nor, despite appearances, is courtesy among them genuine, for it is not rooted in honesty.  Always avoid the company of a dishonourable person: for he who has no regard for honour has none for virtue; and honour is the throne of integrity.

149

Know how to put your troubles on someone else's shoulders: provide yourself with shields against ill-will; it is a very skilful device of rulers.  To have someone upon whom the blame for mistakes and the universal flail of gossip may fall is not, as the malicious think, the outcome of incapacity, but, rather, of superior shrewdness. Everything cannot turn out well, nor can you please every one. So have a scapegoat who, at the cost of his own ambition, will be a target for your misfortunes.

182

It is a large part of wisdom to behave with a grain of audacity in all one's affairs.  Be moderate in the ideas you form of others in order not to think so highly of them that you come to fear them; imagination should never yield to the heart.  A great many people appear to be important until you have dealings with them; but closer acquaintance provides grounds for disillusion rather than esteem. No one transcends the restricted bounds of humanity, all have their limitations, some of the mind, others of character.  Rank confers an apparent authority [but] it is rarely accompanied by personal worth, for fortune usually counterbalances the loftiness of the position with an inferiority of merits in its holder.  Imagination always leaps ahead and paints things far brighter than they are.  It conceives not only that which is, but also that which might be.  Reason, so often disillusioned by experience, should correct this tendency; but folly ought not to be rash, nor virtue fearful.  And if confidence helps the simple, how much more the worthy and the wise!

183

Do not be opinionated.  Every fool is opinionated, and every opinionated person is a fool; and the more mistaken his judgement the greater his pertinacity.  Even when matters are self-evident it is gracious to give way, for the reason you had [on your side] does not go unrecognized and the courtesy you show is acknowledged.  More is lost by obstinacy than can be gained by victory.  Obstinacy does not champion truth but rather boorishness.  There are blockheads whom it is difficult to convince on account of their extreme and incurable obstinacy; and when inconsistency is combined with stubbornness these two are indissolubly wedded to folly.  Tenacity should be a quality of the will, not of the judgement.  There are, nevertheless, exceptional cases in which you must not give way and thereby suffer a twofold defeat: in the one case of your ideas, in the other of their execution.

Baltasar Gracian, The Oracle: A Manual of the Art of Discretion