quote · Legacy record
Never complain. To complain always brings discredit. Better be a model of self-reliance opposed to the passion of others than an object of their compassion. For it opens the way for the hearer to what we are complaining of, and to disclose one insult forms an excuse for another. By complaining of past offences we give occasion for future ones, and in seeking aid or counsel we only obtain indifference or contempt. It is much more politic to praise one man's favours, so that others may feel obliged to follow suit. To recount the favours we owe the absent is to demand similar ones from the present, and thus we sell our credit with the one to the other. The shrewd will therefore never publish to the world his failures or his defects, but only those marks of consideration which serve to keep friendship alive and enmity silent.
Never complain. To complain always brings discredit. Better be a model of self-reliance opposed to the passion of others than an object of their compassion. For it opens the way for the hearer to what we are complaining of, and to disclose one insult forms an excuse for another. By complaining of past offences we give occasion for future ones, and in seeking aid or counsel we only obtain indifference or contempt. It is much more politic to praise one man's favours, so that others may feel obliged to follow suit. To recount the favours we owe the absent is to demand similar ones from the present, and thus we sell our credit with the one to the other. The shrewd will therefore never publish to the world his failures or his defects, but only those marks of consideration which serve to keep friendship alive and enmity silent.
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
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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 cxxix; Joseph Jacobs translation; London: Macmillan and Co., Limited,1892 (source title page supplies bracketed year)
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