quote · Legacy record
Prize Intensity more than Extent. Excellence resides in quality not in quantity. The best is always few and rare: much lowers value. Even among men giants are commonly the real dwarfs. Some reckon books by the thickness, as if they were written to try the brawn more than the brain. Extent alone never rises above mediocrity: it is the misfortune of universal geniuses that in attempting to be at home everywhere, are so nowhere. Intensity gives eminence, and rises to the heroic in matters sublime.
Prize Intensity more than Extent. Excellence resides in quality not in quantity. The best is always few and rare: much lowers value. Even among men giants are commonly the real dwarfs. Some reckon books by the thickness, as if they were written to try the brawn more than the brain. Extent alone never rises above mediocrity: it is the misfortune of universal geniuses that in attempting to be at home everywhere, are so nowhere. Intensity gives eminence, and rises to the heroic in matters sublime.
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 xxvii; Joseph Jacobs translation; London: Macmillan and Co., Limited,1892 (source title page supplies bracketed year)
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