quote · Legacy record
Waste not Influence. The great as friends are for great occasions. One should not make use of great confidence for little things: for that is to waste a favour. The sheet anchor should be reserved for the last extremity. If you use up the great for little ends what remains afterwards? Nothing is more valuable than a protector, and nothing costs more nowadays than a favour. It can make or unmake a whole world. It can even give sense and take it away. As Nature and Fame are favourable to the wise, so Luck is generally envious of them. It is therefore more important to keep the favour of the mighty than goods and chattels.
Waste not Influence. The great as friends are for great occasions. One should not make use of great confidence for little things: for that is to waste a favour. The sheet anchor should be reserved for the last extremity. If you use up the great for little ends what remains afterwards? Nothing is more valuable than a protector, and nothing costs more nowadays than a favour. It can make or unmake a whole world. It can even give sense and take it away. As Nature and Fame are favourable to the wise, so Luck is generally envious of them. It is therefore more important to keep the favour of the mighty than goods and chattels.
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 clxxi; 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.