quote · Legacy record
Find out each Man's Thumbscrew. ’Tis the art of setting their wills in action. It needs more skill than resolution. You must know where to get at any one. Every volition has a special motive which varies according to taste. All men are idolaters, some of fame, others of self-interest, most of pleasure. Skill consists in knowing these idols in order to bring them into play. Knowing any man's mainspring of motive you have as it were the key to his will. Have resort to primary motors, which are not always the highest but more often the lowest part of his nature: there are more dispositions badly organised than well. First guess a man's ruling passion, appeal to it by a word, set it in motion by temptation, and you will infallibly give checkmate to his freedom of will.
Find out each Man's Thumbscrew. ’Tis the art of setting their wills in action. It needs more skill than resolution. You must know where to get at any one. Every volition has a special motive which varies according to taste. All men are idolaters, some of fame, others of self-interest, most of pleasure. Skill consists in knowing these idols in order to bring them into play. Knowing any man's mainspring of motive you have as it were the key to his will. Have resort to primary motors, which are not always the highest but more often the lowest part of his nature: there are more dispositions badly organised than well. First guess a man's ruling passion, appeal to it by a word, set it in motion by temptation, and you will infallibly give checkmate to his freedom of will.
Approximate author period: c. 1630 AD · renaissance
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- Author or tradition
- Baltasar Gracián
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- 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 xxvi; Joseph Jacobs translation; London: Macmillan and Co., Limited,1892 (source title page supplies bracketed year)
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