Top 200 Baltasar Gracián Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Know how to use evasion. That is how smart people get out of difficulties.”

— Baltasar Gracián

102. “Know the great men of your age.”

— Baltasar Gracián

103. “Some would be sages if they did not believe they were so already.”

— Baltasar Gracián

104. “The more merit, the less affection.”

— Baltasar Gracián

105. “Evil report carries further than any applause.”

— Baltasar Gracián

106. “We live by information, not by sight.”

— Baltasar Gracián

107. “There are rules to luck, not everything is chance for the wise; luck can be helped by skill.”

— Baltasar Gracián

108. “Passion colors all that it touches in its own hues.”

— Baltasar Gracián

109. “It requires as much caution to tell the truth as to conceal it.”

— Baltasar Gracián

110. “We have more days to live through than pleasures. Be slow in enjoyment, quick at work, for men see work ended with pleasure, pleasure ended with regret.”

— Baltasar Gracián

111. “There are certain inessential activities-moths of precious time-and it is worse to busy yourself with the trivial than to do nothing.”

— Baltasar Gracián

112. “Better mad with the rest of the world than wise alone.”

— Baltasar Gracián

113. “A bad manner spoils everything, even reason and justice; a good one supplies everything, gilds a No, sweetens a truth, and adds a touch of beauty to old age itself.”

— Baltasar Gracián

114. “Do not show your wounded finger for everything will knock up against it.”

— Baltasar Gracián

115. “Two kinds of people are good at foreseeing danger: those who have learned at their own expense, and the clever people who learn a great deal at the expense of others.”

— Baltasar Gracián

116. “Keep expectation alive. Keep stirring it up. Let much promise more, and great deeds herald greater.”

— Baltasar Gracián

117. “The greatest fool is he who thinks he is not one and all others are.”

— Baltasar Gracián

118. “They make the greatest show of what they have done, who have done least.”

— Baltasar Gracián

119. “Don’t express your ideas too clearly. Most people think little of what they understand, and venerate what they do not.”

— Baltasar Gracián

120. “Trust your heart, especially when it is a strong one.”

— Baltasar Gracián

121. “When you find Fortune favorable, stride boldly forward, for she favors the bold, and being a woman, the young.”

— Baltasar Gracián

122. “Let him that hath no power of patience retire within himself, though even there he will have to put up with himself.”

— Baltasar Gracián

123. “He that has satisfied his thirst turns his back on the well.”

— Baltasar Gracián

124. “Hope is a great falsifier. Let good judgment keep her in check.”

— Baltasar Gracián

125. “Exaggeration is a prodigality of the judgment which shows the narrowness of one’s knowledge or one’s taste.”

— Baltasar Gracián

126. “It is a novel kind of supremacy, the best that life can offer, to have as servants by skill those who by nature are our masters.”

— Baltasar Gracián

127. “Many have had their greatness made for them by their enemies.”

— Baltasar Gracián

128. “Everything foreign is respected, partly because it comes from afar, partly because it is ready made and perfect.”

— Baltasar Gracián

129. “The heaven of the envied is hell for the envious.”

— Baltasar Gracián

130. “To overvalue something is a form of lying.”

— Baltasar Gracián

131. “Leave your luck while still winning.”

— Baltasar Gracián

132. “If you are wise, live as you can; if you cannot, live as you would.”

— Baltasar Gracián

133. “What the multitude says, is so, or soon will be so.”

— Baltasar Gracián

134. “Cultivate those who can teach you.”

— Baltasar Gracián

135. “It is impossible to live without brains, either one’s own or borrowed.”

— Baltasar Gracián

136. “Politeness and a sense of honor have this advantage: we bestow them on others without losing a thing.”

— Baltasar Gracián

137. “It is therefore an excellent device to acquire knowledge from everybody.”

— Baltasar Gracián

138. “At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty a nothing at all.”

— Baltasar Gracián

139. “Nothing arouses ambition so much in the heart as the trumpet-clang of another’s fame.”

— Baltasar Gracián

140. “Cunning grows in deceit at seeing itself discovered, and tries to deceive with truth itselft.”

— Baltasar Gracián

141. “One deceit needs many others, and so the whole house is built in the air and must soon come to the ground.”

— Baltasar Gracián

142. “To be at ease is better than to be at business. Nothing really belongs to us but time, which even he has who has nothing else.”

— Baltasar Gracián

143. “Fools rush in through the door; for folly is always bold.”

— Baltasar Gracián

144. “Truth always lags behind, limping along on the arm of Time.”

— Baltasar Gracián

145. “God Himself chasteneth not with a rod but with time.”

— Baltasar Gracián

146. “A wise prince must never take things easy in times of peace.”

— Baltasar Gracián

147. “Most do violence to their natural aptitude, and thus attain superiority in nothing.”

— Baltasar Gracián

148. “It is more offensive to outshine in dignity than in personal attractions.”

— Baltasar Gracián

149. “The liar suffers twice: he neither believes nor is believed.”

— Baltasar Gracián

150. “You may be obliged to wage war, but not to use poisoned arrows.”

— Baltasar Gracián