Baltasar Gracián y Morales,
SJ ( 1601 – 1658) was a
Spanish Jesuit and baroque prose
writer. He was born in Belmonte, near
Calatayud (Aragon). His proto-existentialist
writings were lauded by Nietzsche
and Schopenhauer.
Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia (literally The Oracle, a Manual of the Art of Discretion),
commonly translated as Art
of Worldly Wisdom is almost entirely composed of three hundred
maxims with commentary. He constantly plays with words: each phrase becomes a
puzzle, using the most diverse rhetorical devices.
