Sunday, January 4, 2009

New Years Resolutions of Sorts.

I have been reading The Wisdom of Baltasar Gracian; A practical manual for good and perilous times, it has been a great read. Baltasar was a Jesuit philosopher who by the end of his life was  sent to live in a far away village of Graus and all his published works had been banned. Many great philosophers, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, have drawn from Gracian's work.
Here is some of the advice he gives in his last book. I am going to attempt to incorporate this advice into my own life.
He who lives long lives well.
No man is wise at all hours.
Sharp words make more wounds than surgeons can heal.
Life is less forbidding with someone at your side.
Keep your wounds to your self.
Stubbornness is a self-inflicted wound.
Avoid being the subject of your conversation.
Do not act in the heat of passion.
He who speaks evil about another attracts evil to himself.
Follow your own bent, no matter what people say.
Ill manners cause disfavor
Virtue, not fortune, makes a man worth loving.
At times, the remedy for an evil is to forget it.
Keeping friends is more important then making them.
Few men can do us good, nearly all can do us harm.