How To Use Your Enemies Flashcards
In your affairs create suspense
Do not show all your cards
Avoid complete frankness
Cautious silence is the refuge of good sense
A decision openly declared is never respected
Knowledge and courage contribute in turn to greatness
You are as much as you know
A wise person can do anything
Without courage, wisdom is sterile
The height of perfection
Perfect yourself and your activities
Be wise in word and sensible in deed as that sort of person is sought out for the singular company of the discreet
Make people depend on you.
Let experience’s first lesson be to maintain and never satisfy dependence, keeping even royalty always in need of you.
Achieve the height of perfection
Perfect yourself and your activities day by day until you become a truly consummate being
This will be evident in the excellence of your taste, the refinement of your judgement, the purity of your will.
Avoid outdoing your superior
All triumphs are despised, and triumphing over your superior is either stupid or fatal.
Advice should be offered as if a reminder of what they’ve forgotten, not an insight that they’ve never had.
Belie your national defects
It’s a skilful triumph to correct, or at least to conceal, these national faults; you’ll gain credit as unique among your countrymen, for what’s least expected has always been more esteemed.
Deal with people from whom you can learn.
The circumspect frequent the company of eminent individuals whose houses are theatres of greatness rather than palaces of vanity.
The gates of Hell Virgil
The gates of hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labor lies.
Virgil, Virgil’s Aeneid
Roman epic poet (70 BC - 19 BC)
Smart retort by Shakespeare
I would challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see you are unarmed.
—William Shakespeare—
Prudence
Prudence (Latin: prudentia, contracted from providentia meaning “seeing ahead, sagacity”) is the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason.[1]
It is classically considered to be a virtue, and in particular one of the four Cardinal virtues (which are, with the three theological virtues, part of the seven virtues). Also, being careful how you make decisions or use money wisely.
‘Speak if you want me to know you!’
Socrates says this to a boy whose talents he wished to assess. Speech is the mirror of the soul. Erasmus 1469-1536
