A review by catherineofalx
The Art of Worldly Wisdom: A Pocket Oracle by Baltasar Gracian

This is literally just Baroque fortune cookies. And that's what makes it so entertaining, but also so vacuous. It was produced as literally a "pocket oracle"—a tiny book you pull out of your pocket, flip to a page at random, and take that advice for what it's worth. Hence, if you read it all the way though as a modern edition, it's endlessly contradictory and frustrating. It's aphoristic, not systematic! That's a genre!

Basically, this has nothing meaningful to say about morality, but it's a fun puzzle game. Barroco típico.