Help others solve their problems; standing farther away, you can often see matters more clearly than they do. . . The greatest service you can render someone else is helping him or her help themselves.
Baltasar GracianRead
It is good to vary in order that you may frustrate the curious, especially those who envy you.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Embracing variability can protect you from those who might envy your success.
This quote emphasizes the importance of being unpredictable in your actions or choices as a means of safeguarding oneself from the jealousy of others. By varying your approaches and maintaining a level of intrigue, you can keep those who wish to undermine you at bay, especially if they harbor envious feelings towards your achievements or circumstances.
Themes
VariabilityEnvyCuriosityProtectionWisdom
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech, one could use this quote to encourage individuals to embrace their uniqueness.
More from Baltasar Gracian
All quotes βIt is a novel kind of supremacy, the best that life can offer, to have as servants by skill those who by nature are our masters.
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Advice is sometimes transmitted more successfully through a joke than grave teaching.
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It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterwards.
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Two kinds of people are good at foreseeing danger: those who have learned at their own expense, and the clever people who learn a great deal at the expense of others.
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The envious die not once, but as oft as the envied win applause.
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