balthasar gracian: a reading's afterthought

There is a clear distinction between choices of right and wrong that pervasively dissimulating complications can only disturb. The more variables and subtleties of deceit and heartless pre-eminence of self-interest and advantage sought among a people, the more craft required to perform right, let alone the slender tensile interior strength required to incline to it.

Percipient cunning, commanding appropriate oblique measures with care and employing attentive, distracting charm, can be just as necessary to perform right as it is used by villainy to mock it. Application is different, as are the results, in one act or many, over time or an instant, delivering on occassion the bad to hell with finesse while serving heaven to the good with grace.