Baltasar Gracian

Gracian the Art of Prudence Baltasar Gracian

Baltasar Gracián y Morales, better known as Baltasar Gracián, was a Spanish Jesuit and philosopher. Gracián's style, generically called conceptism, is characterized by ellipsis and the concentration of a maximum of significance in a minimum of form, an approach referred to in Spanish as agudeza (wit), and which is brought to its extreme in "The Art of Prudence" or "The art of governing" oneself which 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. His writings were lauded by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.