Things do not pass for what they are, but for what they seem.

In 1647 a Jesuit of Aragon set down three hundred maxims on the art of getting on in a difficult world - the rival, the flatterer, the superior who must not be outshone, the fool who cannot be avoided. His own order disciplined him for publishing them. The world has been consulting them ever since.

Gracián does not console. His counsel runs: Wait. Know yourself. Never compete. Do, and be seen doing. Put up with fools. Make use of folly. Be able to forget. Leave off hungry.

• All three hundred maxims, complete and unabridged, in Gracián's own order
• Joseph Jacobs's classic 1892 translation
• Ten themed parts, each titled from a maxim within it
• A frontispiece and ten full-page paintings in full colour - El Greco, Velázquez, Zurbarán, Murillo
• An introduction to Gracián, his troubled Jesuit career, and his afterlife among the philosophers

Schopenhauer admired the book enough to translate it into German himself; Nietzsche judged that Europe had produced nothing subtler in matters of moral delicacy. Presented by Trace Press and The Northlume Library, a companion to The Art of Being Right. Read a page each morning, and know exactly what everyone around you is doing.

*Public-domain works as credited in the book - cover and frontispiece after Esquivel's Baldomero Espartero (1841); plates by El Greco, Velázquez, Zurbarán and Murillo*