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Keep to Yourself the final Touches of your Art. This is a maxim of the great masters who pride themselves on this subtlety in teaching their pupils: one must always remain superior, remain master. One must teach an art artfully. The source of knowledge need not be pointed out no more than that of giving. By this means a man preserves the respect and the dependence of others. In amusing and teaching you must keep to the rule: keep up expectation and advance in perfection. To keep a reserve is a great rule for life and for success, especially for those in high place.

Keep to Yourself the final Touches of your Art. This is a maxim of the great masters who pride themselves on this subtlety in teaching their pupils: one must always remain superior, remain master. One must teach an art artfully. The source of knowledge need not be pointed out no more than that of giving. By this means a man preserves the respect and the dependence of others. In amusing and teaching you must keep to the rule: keep up expectation and advance in perfection. To keep a reserve is a great rule for life and for success, especially for those in high place.

Approximate author period: c. 1630 AD · renaissance

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Attribution & collection notes
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 ccxii; 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.