The Art of Worldly Wisdom is a 17th century book of maxims written by a Spanish rector of the Catholic Church. It was innovative at the time for being one of the first that attempted to collect human wisdom is a handy pocket guide, a template for more modern wisdom books like The 48 Laws Of Power.
Here are the morsels of wisdom from the book that made the strongest impression on me:
1. Seek knowledge
Knowledge and Courage are the elements of Greatness. They give immortality, because they are immortal. Each is as much as he knows, and the wise can do anything. A man without knowledge, a world without light. Wisdom and strength, eyes and hands. Knowledge without courage is sterile.
2. Make others depedent on you
…hope has a good memory, gratitude a bad one. More is to be got from dependence than from courtesy.
3. Don’t succumb to the collective flaws of your peers
Avoid the Faults of your Nation. Water shares the good or bad qualities of the strata through which it flows, and man those of the climate in which he is born.
4. Act
Mediocrity obtains more with application than superiority without it.
[…]
Bad execution of your designs does less harm than irresolution in forming them.
5. True wisdom will find its audience
The sage has one advantage: he is immortal. If this is not his century many others will be.
6. Be vigilant
Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.
7. Be patient
You must pass through the circumference of time before arriving at the centre of opportunity. A wise reserve seasons the aims and matures the means. Time’s crutch effects more than the iron club of Hercules. God Himself chasteneth not with a rod but with time. He spake a great word who said, “Time and I against any two.” Fortune herself rewards waiting with the first prize.
8. Easy come, easy go
Quickly done can be quickly undone. To last an eternity requires an eternity of preparation.
9. Carve your own path
Those who come first are the heirs of Fame; the others get only a younger brother’s allowance: whatever they do, they cannot persuade the world they are anything more than parrots.
10. Don’t joke all the time
A continual jest soon loses all zest. Many get the repute of being witty, but thereby lose the credit of being sensible. Jest has its little hour, seriousness should have all the rest.
11. Beware of the extremes
A sage once reduced all virtue to the golden mean. Push right to the extreme and it becomes wrong: press all the juice from an orange and it becomes bitter. Even in enjoyment never go to extremes. Thought too subtle is dull. If you milk a cow too much you draw blood, not milk.
12. Be humble
Be extraordinary in your excellence, if you like, but be ordinary in your display of it. The more light a torch gives, the more it burns away and the nearer ’tis to going out. Show yourself less and you will be rewarded by being esteemed more.
13. Know thyself
You cannot master yourself unless you know yourself. There are mirrors for the face but none for the mind. Let careful thought about yourself serve as a substitute. When the outer image is forgotten, keep the inner one to improve and perfect. Learn the force of your intellect and capacity for affairs, test the force of your courage in order to apply it, and keep your foundations secure and your head clear for everything.
14. Earn respect before demanding it
Do not enforce respect, but try and create it. Those who insist on the dignity of their office, show they have not deserved it, and that it is too much for them. If you wish to be valued, be valued for your talents, not for anything adventitious. Even kings prefer to be honoured for their personal qualifications rather than for their station.
15. Waiting may be the best course of action
A fountain gets muddy with but little stirring up, and does not get clear by our meddling with it but by our leaving it alone.
16. Success can hurt friendships
A wise friend wards off worries, a foolish one brings them about. But do not wish them too much luck, or you may lose them.
17. Think before you speak
There is always time to add a word, never to withdraw one. Talk as if you were making your will: the fewer words the less litigation. In trivial matters exercise yourself for the more weighty matters of speech. Profound secrecy has some of the lustre of the divine.
18. Maintain reserves
A man should not employ all his capacity and power at once and on every occasion. Even in knowledge there should be a rearguard, so that your resources are doubled. One must always have something to resort to when there is fear of a defeat.
19. Don’t fight a starving animal
Never contend with a Man who has nothing to Lose; for thereby you enter into an unequal conflict. The other enters without anxiety; having lost everything, including shame, he has no further loss to fear. He therefore re-sorts to all kinds of insolence.
20. Sip slowly on life’s pleasures
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.
21. Great men aren’t perfect
No one o’ersteps the narrow bounds of humanity: all have their weaknesses either in heart or head.
22. Don’t befriend fools
He that does not know a fool when he sees him is one himself: still more he that knows him but will not keep clear of him. They are dangerous company and ruinous confidants.
23. Always have dreams
Leave Something to wish for, so as not to be miserable from very happiness. The body must respire and the soul aspire. If one possessed all, all would be disillusion and discontent. Even in knowledge there should be always something left to know in order to arouse curiosity and excite hope. Surfeits of happiness are fatal.
24. Use different strategies for different tasks
Attempt easy Tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy. In the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed.
25. Don’t shock
…the most expert doctors of the soul pay great attention to the means of sweetening the pill of truth. For when it deals with the destroying of illusion it is the quintessence of bitterness.
26. Friendships change
Trust the friends of to-day as if they will be enemies to-morrow, and that of the worst kind. As this happens in reality, let it happen in your precaution.
27. Don’t make a man feel too indebted to you
With many persons it is not necessary to do more than overburden them with favours to lose them altogether: they cannot repay you, and so they retire, preferring rather to be enemies than perpetual debtors. The idol never wishes to see before him the sculptor who shaped him, nor does the benefited wish to see his benefactor always before his eyes.
28. Always remain diligent
Have no careless Days. Fate loves to play tricks, and will heap up chances to catch us unawares. Our intelligence, prudence, and courage, even our beauty, must always be ready for trial. For their day of careless trust will be that of their discredit. Care always fails just when it was most wanted.
29. Don’t be quick to vouch for others
Do not become responsible for all or for every one, otherwise you become a slave and the slave of all. Some are born more fortunate than others: they are born to do good as others to receive it. Freedom is more precious than any gifts for which you may be tempted to give it up.
30. Stop just short of being sated
Leave off Hungry. One ought to remove even the bowl of nectar from the lips. Demand is the measure of value. Even with regard to bodily thirst it is a mark of good taste to slake but not to quench it. Little and good is twice good. The second time comes a great falling off.
31. Virtue is greater than wealth
A man’s capacity and greatness are to be measured by his virtue and not by his fortune. She alone is all-sufficient.
While I agreed with much of the wisdom written in this book, there were a few instances where I didn’t. For example, he advises you to withdraw from hot streaks so as not to push your luck: “Leave your Luck while Winning. All the best players do it. A fine retreat is as good as a gallant attack.” But then how will you know when your streak is over? He is also extra sensitive to rejection and urges you to do your best to not fail in anything, a position that makes his other maxims on success just about impossible to achieve. I understand it’s difficult for one men to present a perfect system of human wisdom, so his attempt was overall quite impressive.
As you may have noticed, the writing is dense. You need to devote your full concentration to understand what the author is trying to say. I found it quite trying, but nonetheless enjoyed the refreshing of my memory on things I have learned through experience and study. Think of this as a review manual for life.
Because all the maxims are so short, this would make an excellent bathroom book, and I don’t mean that as an insult to the author. It’s very easy to pick up, read for a few minutes, and then put back down. If you don’t mind an older style of writing, it’s worth your while.
Read More: “The Art Of Worldly Wisdom” on Amazon
14. Earn respect before demanding it
Lost on feminists.
To be fair, that one is lost on many people, regardless of their ideology. Extremely prevalent in organizatoins with official authority heirarchies and politically-motivated promotions.
Generalizing the original comment adds nothing, particularly fairness. It was lost on Tumblr Feminists. It is still lost on Tumblr Feminists.
As for Leave you Luck while winning, I find myself agreeing with it. It sounds similar to “End the conversation at its highest point”. It has more parallels to game than what meets the eye when you think about it.
A cluster of vague and contradictory maxims are impressive to you?
“Make others dependent on you,” but “don’t make a man feel indebted to you,” however if you do then “great men aren’t perfect” anyway. “Act” but remember that “waiting may be the best course of action,” then again you may have to “carve your own path,” but if not then just “be patient.”
Want my advice? Follow #1 and “seek knowledge,” don’t bother reading the rest.
“Want my advice? ”
No. Banned.
😀
Banning some bitch because she dissed your favorite shitter read? Lmao.
No. You ban the bitch because women area so fucked in the head they think they can waltz into the men’s bathroom and start behaving as if anyone wants her goddam “advice”. Its true. Have you ever seen a woman barge into a men’s loo univited because the line up for the ladies room is full? Holy shit, she actually believes she has a “right” to be there.
You ban her because it’s classier than pissing on her leg.
Women are too arrogant to understand this until they get pissed on. They work their butts off to look as petulant and brackish as possible… but are never cunts to themselves.
Men float through life with our discretionary man-class.
Roosh, how about a pink cupcake for hamster brains trying to carve logical arguments and conclusions….
Good post, I think obviously enough. Abigail M. could be a troll, or a woman, or both. However, ‘she’ did use logic in her assessment. Is not the point of RoK to make people think? Maybe it is only for male think, which is fine if that’s the express policy.
My point is, I can’t imagine a women expressing a better opinion on the philosophy of wisdom (a recursive, reflexive idea I know).
What make women simple for me to understand was that they are instictively compulsive frauds marketing vaginas for maximum social rank and reproductive advantage. As a result, women have no understanding of time, of context. The past and the future are always subservient to the expedience of here and now. I can understand a women, with all the due respect she can muster, coming to the conclusion exactly as Abigail expressed it. Text comes off differently without tone and body language: I am not convinced “don’t bother reading the rest” was intended as an insult. Frame, because we can’t entirely live without ’em, until 2050 or so. lol
How much do we expect of women anyway? or care what they think and say? If a man reading female wisdom believes it, he deserves what he gets, especially if he reads this blog. Pain is the best teacher of truth. Wisdom knows that most principles are context sensitive and considers the context as a substantial portion of the truth of a matter, and let the readers exercise their perspicuity. The comment wasn’t posted under a guy’s name, so it’s T-ball. We really need to keep our own counsel as patriarchs as a tacit norm, in my opinion.
Perhaps being deprived of a Y chromosome, it explains that what is tried and tested wisdom comes of as vague and contradictory to you.It takes more than a twitter moment to digest each maxim.
Want my advice?Tits or GTFO
Even that is pandering to her ego too much. How about “no tits, just GTFO” instead?
Why are you replying to yourself?
And Disqus screw another commenter…
They are only contradictory maxims if you attempt to string them all together. For example, in the workplace you definitely will not benefit by being expendable as a result of incompetence. Make others dependent on you by doing your job well. However, if someone owes you too much they might avoid you. They may come to resent you as a result of their real or perceived debt to you. You could miss out on a lot of knowledge just because you didn’t bother to read it. So yeah, I think you missed the point.
A shame that tie hasn’t choked her to death.
Mouth breathers this way ———————->
This is contradictory, for the record.
do you own a strap-on?
oh, well, I’d rather a masculine man anyways…
do you own a strap-on?
oh, well, I’d rather a masculine man anyways…
Can you deep throat?
No? Bye then.
“Sip slowly on life’s pleasures”
No, in today’s day and age Men need to bang as many women as fast as humanly possible. Because banging sluts is all Men have left, and we don’t get any younger.
Make others depedent on you
Be patient
Great men aren’t perfect
I feel these three are the most important out of the 31, Although I feel with one piece of advice we can sum most of it up. “Stop, listen, and think for yourself”.
“The system is designed to create dependency.
It’s so much easier to control those who need.”
more articles like this, less “5 reasons I hate fat bitches”
Your strawman aside, there is much wisdom in both old writing and in mocking laziness, weakness, and gluttony
God is never wrong.
“For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”
What a fantastic post, Roosh. This is something I should read every day.
Great post, thanks Roosh
Nice review and much food for thought here. We all want to ‘know’ when our streak is over, but unless we have magical psychic powers or are paying attention to the card count, small red flags are all we get. My Dad did exceptionally well at blackjack and in his second marriage (my Mom) by knowing the count and developing the discipline to stop when ahead – “luck is the residue of design.” No doubt he had to suffer until those lessons became second nature.
” . . . how will you know when your streak is over?”
Because you have chosen it deliberately, rather than having had it thrust upon you at random.
My father always loved Gracian’s manual.
I know Roosh reviewed Seneca in one of his posts last year, and this review here makes a good companion piece.
The writing style of Gracian as quoted here reminds me of Francis Bacon’s “Essays”, which are also a great thing to read. Lots of dense, epigrammatic wisdom.
Bacon’s Essays belongs up there with the Art of Wordly Wisdom and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, but I always felt he dropped the ball on his chapter on atheism. I don’t understand how one so wise could err so much in judgement.
Really deep post. Will read at least once a week. The lessons in here are extremely dense, and how the author managed to condense them in bullet points, I might never know.
Nevertheless, this is one of those great posts that truly make you reflect and consider life. Some of us would rather avoid bitter truths even though we have taken the redpill, but posts such as these remind us of those bitter truths and help us to deal with the harsh realities of life.
#26 and 27 really resonated with me
The hard part is telling the difference between luck and consequence.
Great article Roosh. I read Gracian a while back and still remember his analogy of the orange peel thrown away after serving its purposes; such is gratitude. I agree with you about your observation regarding his scrupulosity (He was a Jesuit Priest of the 17th century).
Great post Roosh. If only modern men applied more of the old hard-earned wisdom …
Great words of wisdom. I agree that they are dense and would need to be thought about and dwelled on for a long time before they really sink into our behaviour. Not easy to follow a lot of these maxims.
He has another book, it might be “A Pocket Mirror for Hero’s”
My two cents on leaving the table- when you start mentally counting your money, the streak is over. A general rule of thumb- when one sees eternity, when it appears to stretch forever, it is over, get out before “over” becomes physically realized.
Beautiful post; it’s going to take some space here, but I feel to make a little contribution with ten aphorisms from Pythagoras gathered and explained by Iamblichus and translated by Thomas Taylor:
I. Declining from the public ways, walk in unfrequented paths. By this it is to be understood that those who desire wisdom must seek it in solitude.
II. Govern your tongue before all other things, following the gods. This aphorism warns man that his words, instead of representing him, misrepresent him, and that when in doubt as to what he should say, he should always be silent.
III. The wind blowing, adore the sound. Pythagoras here reminds his disciples that the fiat of God is heard in the voice of the elements, and that all things in Nature manifest through harmony, rhythm, order, or procedure the attributes of the Deity.
IV. Assist a man in raising a burden; but do not assist him in laying it down. The student is instructed to aid the diligent but never to assist those who seek to evade their responsibilities, for it is a great sin to encourage indolence.
V. Speak not about Pythagoric concerns without light. The world is herein warned that it should not attempt to interpret the mysteries of God and the secrets of the sciences without spiritual and intellectual illumination.
VI. Having departed from your house, turn not back, for the furies will be your attendants.Pythagoras here warns his followers that any who begin the search for truth and,after having learned part of the mystery, become discouraged and attempt to return again to their former ways of vice and ignorance, will suffer exceedingly; for it is better to know nothing about Divinity than to learn a little and then stop without learning all.
VII. Nourish a cock, but sacrifice it not; for it is sacred to the sun and moon. Two great lessons are concealed in this aphorism (well, maybe even three hehehe). The first is a warning against the sacrifice of living things to the gods, because life is sacred and man should not destroy it even as an offering to the Deity. The second warns man that the human body here referred to as a cock is sacred to the sun (God) and the moon (Nature), and should be guarded and preserved as man’s most precious medium of expression. Pythagoras also warned his disciples against suicide.
VIII. Receive not a swallow into your house. This warns the seeker after truth not to
allow drifting thoughts to come into his mind nor shiftless persons to enter into his life. He must ever surround himself with rationally inspired thinkers and with conscientious workers.
IX. Offer not your right hand easily to anyone. This warns the disciple to keep his own counsel and not offer wisdom and knowledge (his right hand) to such as are incapable of appreciating them. The hand here represents Truth, which raises those who have fallen because of ignorance; but as many of the unregenerate do not desire wisdom they will cut off the hand that is extended in kindness to them. Time alone can effect the redemption of the ignorant masses
X. When rising from the bedclothes, roll them together, and obliterate the impression of the body. Pythagoras directed his disciples who had awakened from the sleep of ignorance into the waking state of intelligence to eliminate from their recollection all memory of their former spiritual darkness; for a wise man in passing leaves no form behind him which others less intelligent, seeing, shall use as a mold for the casting of idols.
(Source: “The secret teaching of all
ages” – Manly P. Hall)
Pro tip for understanding Gracian:
Work with multiple translations.
You’re right that Gracian is really dense and difficult to understand. If you have several different translations, sometimes the material becomes a lot more clear. For example, in one translation, a passage might sound really cryptic, but in another translation it will be crystal clear.
This may sound like overkill, but it is entirely worth it when reading Gracian. His work is like a manual for becoming a “universal hero.”