How to Use Your Enemies

byBaltasar Gracián, Jeremy Robbins (Translator)
'Better mad with the crowd than sane all alone'

In these witty, Machiavellian aphorisms, unlikely Spanish priest Baltasar Gracián shows us how to exploit friends and enemies alike to thrive in a world of deception and illusion.

Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.

Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658). Gracián's work is available in Penguin Classics in The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence.

About Baltasar Gracián

Baltasar Gracián was an aphorist, imaginary biographer, and novelist, who published studies of ideal figures and handbooks on the arts of rhetoric and comportment. His books include The Hero, Shrewdness and the Art of the Artist, The Art of Worldly Wisdom, and The Master Critic. Many high officials felt attacked by the controversial and critical works of this Jesuit priest-professor. Gracián refused to be censored, and was eventually confined to solitary house arrest, where he died.
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