quote · Words worth keeping
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. Lay less stress on making many dependent on you than on keeping yourself independent of any. The sole advantage of power is that you can do more good. Above all do not regard responsibility as a favour, for generally it is another's plan to make one dependent on him.
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. Lay less stress on making many dependent on you than on keeping yourself independent of any. The sole advantage of power is that you can do more good. Above all do not regard responsibility as a favour, for generally it is another's plan to make one dependent on him.
Approximate author period: c. 1630 AD · renaissance
Meaning not yet available
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- Author or tradition
- Baltasar Gracián
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin. - Historical period
- Approximate author period: c. 1630 AD · renaissance
author lifetime midpoint (1601–1658); not quotation composition date
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1892 English translation) (1892 AD)
Main maxims, complete printed maxim cclxxxvi; Joseph Jacobs translation; London: Macmillan and Co., Limited,1892 (source title page supplies bracketed year)
A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.
The voice behind the words.
Spanish writer; lifetime dates supplied by Joseph Jacobs’s historical introduction to the 1892 translation. Historical edition attribution, not independent quotation authentication.
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