The Art of Worldly Wisdom

It is rare that the world of books and the world of getting around to writing books come together, but over on the 43folders blog grant has been writing about Balthasar Gracian, a seventeenth-century Jesuit scholar from Spain. Gracian's book The Art of Worldly Wisdom is apparently an underground favourite among those who seek to bring order and direction to their lives. He is often compared with Machiavelli or Sun Tzu as a writer of aphorisms; The Art of Worldly Wisdom is a guide to life similar to The Prince. The 43folders post picks up especially on Gracian's understanding of the sensation of modernity and the flow of information. Gracian says:

There is more required nowadays to make a single wise man than formerly to make Seven Sages, and more is needed nowadays to deal with a single person than was required with a whole people in former times.

Here's the link to The Art of Worldly Wisdom again.

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