# Newsletters > Balthasar Gracian's The Art of Worldly Wisdom >  Aphorism #104 Try your hand at Office.

## Admin

Aphorism #104 Try your hand at Office.

It requires varied qualities, and to know which is needed taxes attention and calls for masterlydiscernment. Some demand courage, others tact. Those that merely require rectitude are the easiest, the most difficult those requiring cleverness. For the former all that is necessary is character; for the latter all one's attention and zeal may not suffice. ÂTis a troublesome business to rule men, still more fools or blockheads: double sense is needed with those who have none. It is intolerable when an office engrosses a man with fixed hours and a settled routine. Those are better that leave a man free to follow his own devices, combining variety with importance, for the change refreshes the mind. The most in repute are those that have least or most distant dependence on others; the worst is that which worries us both here and hereafter. 


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