Baltasar Gracián

Baltasar Gracián y Morales was born on 8 January 1601 in Belmonte, near Calatayud in Aragón, and became a Jesuit priest and Baroque prose writer. In 1647 he published The Art of Worldly Wisdom, the book that would make his name beyond Spain—a collection of maxims on navigating power, deception, and social terrain. Between 1651 and 1657 he released El Criticón, a novel now considered his greatest work, though it never found the same audience. He died on 6 December 1658, his reputation quiet for centuries until Schopenhauer and Nietzsche discovered him and held his writings up as rare clear-eyed…