Name: How to Use Your Enemies
ISBN: 9780141398273

Baltasar Gracián

Baltasar Gracián y Morales

A seventeenth-century Spanish priest's shrewd maxims on using guile and pragmatism to succeed in a dangerous world.

How to Use Your Enemies

It's interesting to think that a 17th Century Priest has advice on how to give a speech, to dealing with your manager, and contract negotiations, and yet the more people change, the more people stay the same. 

 is not a guide to use and manipulate your enemies bit rather selected aphorisms from Baltasar Gracián's larger work 

, that occasionally address how to avoid creating enemies and giving them more ammunition than you need to, mildly ironic given Baltasar was exiled from his job. 

Favorite Line: "Imitate divinity’s way of doing things to keep people attentive and alert."

J Kadow

It's interesting to think that a 17th Century Priest has advice on how to give a speech, to dealing with your manager, and contract negotiations, and yet the more people change, the more people stay the same. 

That said, How to Use Your Enemies is not a guide to use and manipulate your enemies bit rather selected aphorisms from Baltasar Gracián's larger work Manual Oracle and Art of Discretion, that occasionally address how to avoid creating enemies and giving them more ammunition than you need to, mildly ironic given Baltasar was exiled from his job. 

Favorite Line: "Imitate divinity’s way of doing things to keep people attentive and alert."

Double Feature: Everything: A Book of Aphorisms - Aaron Haspel

kristiana grigas 

Krishei Ralleca

Are you a lawyer or want to be a lawyer? this book is recommended. I know that it might be considered "bad" and "manipulative" to some people, but hey, this guy probably only acted like this to survive. And honestly, you kinda need to be manipulative to reach the top. 

Ironically, Gracian was a priest, it was pretty funny to me reading this while it says stuff like "befriend others and benefit" while thinking a priest wrote this but I would def recommend this, just don't recommend this to your friends and people you know in real life, they might find your books of choice pretty suspicious.

'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.