In 1637, a Jesuit Monk called Balthasar Gracian wrote a book, Oraculo manual y arte de prudencia , also called The Art of Worldly Wisdom in English. This was a bestseller of the times and contains 300 paragraphs on a wide range of subjects.

The 300 lessons:

1. Everything is at its peak of perfection.
2. Character and intellect.
3. Keep matters for a time in suspense.
4. Knowledge and courage. These are the elements of greatness.
5. Make people depend on you.
6. A person at his peak.
7. Avoid outshining your superiors.
8. Be without passions.
9. Avoid the faults of your nation.
10. Fortune and Fame.
11. Cultivate relationships with those who can teach you.
12. Nature and art, material and workmanship.
13. Act sometimes on second thoughts, sometimes on first impulse.
14. The thing itself and the way it is done.
15. Keep auxiliary wits around you.
16. Knowledge and good intentions.
17. Vary your mode of action.
18. Application and ability.
19. Arouse no exaggerated expectations when you start something.
20. A man of the times.
21. The art of being lucky.
22. Knowledge has a purpose.
23. Be free of imperfections.
24. Keep you imagination under control.
25. Know how to take a hint.
26. Find out each person's thumbscrew.
27. Prize intensity more than extent.
28. Be common in nothing. Especially not in taste.
29. Be a person of integrity.
30. Have nothing to do with disreputable occupations.
31. Select the lucky and avoid the unlucky.
32. Have a reputation for being gracious.
33. Know how to withdraw.
34. Know your strongest quality.
35. Think things over, especially those that are important.
36. Before acting or refraining weigh your luck.
37. Keep a store of sarcasms and know how to use them.
38. Leave your luck while still winning.
39. Recognize when things are ripe, and know how to enjoy them.
40. Gain people's goodwill.
41. Never exaggerate.
42. Natural leadership.
43. Think with the few and speak with the many.
44. Sympathy with great minds.
45. Use, but do not abuse, cunning.
46. Master your antipathies.
47. Avoid incurring obligations.
48. So much depends on being a person of depth.
49. Be a person of observation and judgement.
50. Never lose your self-respect.
51. Know how to choose well. Most of life depends on this.
52. Never be upset. It is a great aim of prudence never to be embarrassed.
53. Be diligent and intelligent.
54. Know how to show your strength.
55. Know how to wait.
56. Have presence of mind.
57. Be slow and sure.
58. Adapt yourself to those around you.
59. Finish off well.
60. Have sound judgment.
61. Excel in what is excellent.
62. Use good instruments.
63. To be the first of the kind is excellent.
64. Avoid worry.
65. Cultivate taste.
66. See to it that things end well.
67. Choose an occupation that wins distinction.
68. It is better to help with intelligence than with memory.
69. Do not give way to every common impulse.
70. Know how to say "no."
71. Do not vacillate.
72. Be resolute.
73. Know how to use evasion.
74. Do not be unapproachable.
75. Chose a heroic ideal. Emulate rather than imitate.
76. Do not always be joking.
77. Be all things to all people.
78. The art of undertaking things.
79. A jovial disposition.
80. Take care when you get information.
81. Renew your brilliance.
82. Drain nothing to the dregs, neither good nor bad.
83. Allow yourself some forgivable sin.
84. Make use of your enemies.
85. Do not be a wild card, a jack-of-all-trades.
86. Prevent scandal.
87. Culture and elegance.
88. Let your behavior be fine and noble.
89. Know yourself. Know your talents and capacity, in judgement and inclination.
90. The secret of long life. Lead a good life.
91. Never set to work at anything if you have any doubts about its prudence.
92. Transcendent wisdom.
93. Versatility.
94. Keep the extent of your abilities unknown.
96. The highest discretion.
97. Obtain and preserve a reputation.
98. Write your intentions in cipher.
99. Reality and appearance.
100. Be a person without illusions, one who is wise and righteous, a philosophical courtier.
101. One half of the world laughs at the other, and fools are they all.
102. Be able to stomach big slices of luck.
103. Let each keep up his dignity.
104. Get to know what is needed in different occupations.
105. Do not be a bore.
106. Do not parade your position.
107. Show no self-satisfaction.
108. The shortest path to greatness is along with others.
109. Do not be censorious.
110. Do not wait till you are a setting sun.
111. Have friends.
112. Gain goodwill.
113. In times of prosperity prepare for adversity.
114. Never compete. Every competition damages your reputation.
115. Get used to the failings of those around you.
116. Only act with honorable people
117. Never talk about yourself.
118. Acquire the reputation for courtesy.
119. Avoid becoming disliked.
120. Live practically.
121. Do not make much ado about nothing.
122. Distinction in speech and action.
123. Avoid affectation.
124. Make yourself sought after.
125. Do not be a blacklister of other people's faults.
126. Folly consists not in committing folly, but in not hiding it when committed. You should keep your desires sealed up, still more your defects.
127. Grace in everything.
128. High-mindedness.
129. Never complain.
130. Do and be seen doing.
131. Nobility of feeling.
132. Revise your judgements.
133. Better mad with the rest of the world than wise alone.
134. Double your resources. You thereby double your life
135. Do not nourish the spirit of contradiction.
136. Post yourself in the center of things.
137. The sage should be self-sufficient.
138. The art of letting things alone.
139. Recognize unlucky days.
140. Find the good in a thing at once.
141. Do not listen to yourself.
142. Never from obstinacy take the wrong side because your opponent has anticipated you by taking the right one.
143. Never become paradoxical in order to avoid being trite.
144. Begin with another's to end with your own.
145. Do not show your wounded finger, for everything will knock up against it.
146. Look into the interior of things.
147. Do not be inaccessible.
148. Have the art of conversation.
149. Know how to put off ills on others.
150. Know how to get your price for things.
151. Think beforehand.
152. Never have a companion who outshines you.
153. Beware of entering where there is a great gap to be filled.
154. Do not believe, or like, lightly.
155. The art of mastering your passions.
156. Select your friends.
157. Do not make mistakes about character.
158. Make use of your friends.
159. Put up with fools.
160. Be careful in speaking.
161. Know your pet faults.
162. How to triumph over your rivals and detractors.
163. Never - out of sympathy with the unfortunate - involve yourself in their fate.
164. Throw straws in the air to test the wind.
165. Wage war honorably.
166. Distinguish people of words from people of deeds.
167. Know how to rely on yourself.
168. Do not indulge in the eccentricities of folly.
169. Be more careful not to miss once than to hit a hundred times.
170. In all things keep something in reserve.
171. Do not waste influence.
172. Never contend with someone who has nothing to lose.
173. Do not be made of glass in your relations with others, still less in
friendship.
174. Do not live in a hurry.
175. A solid person.
176. Have knowledge, or know those who do.
177. Avoid being to familiar with others.
178. Trust your heart. Especially when it has been proved.
179. Reticence is the seal of capacity.
180. Never guide the enemy to what he has to do.
181. The truth, but not the whole truth.
182. A grain of boldness in everything.
183. Do not hold your views to firmly.
184. Do not stand on ceremony.
185. Never stake your credit on a single cast of the dice.
186. Recognize faults, however highly placed.
187. Do pleasant things yourself, unpleasant things through others.
188. Be the bearer of praise.
189. Utilize another's wants.
190. Find consolation in all things.
191. Do not take payment in politeness.
192. A peaceful life is a long life. To live, let live.
193. Watch out for people who begin with another's concerns to end with their own.
194. Have reasonable views of yourself and of your affairs
195. Know how to appreciate.
196. Know your ruling star.
197. Do not carry fools on your back.
198. Know how to transplant yourself.
199. Find your proper place by merit, not by presumption.
200. Leave something to wish for.
201. They are all fools who seem so, as well as half the rest.
202. Words and deeds make the perfect person.
203. Know the great people of your age.
204. Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult and difficult as if they were easy.
205. Know how to play the card of contempt.
206. Know that there are vulgar people everywhere.
207. Be moderate.
208. Do not die of the fools' disease.
209. Keep yourself free from common follies
210. Know how to play the card of truth.
211. In heaven all is bliss.
212. Keep to yourself the final touches of your art.
213. Know how to contradict.
214. Do not turn one blunder into two.
215. Watch out for those who act on second thoughts.
216. Be expressive.
217. Neither love nor hate forever.
218. Never act from obstinacy but from knowledge.
219. Do not pass for a hypocrite.
220. If you cannot clothe yourself in lion-skin use foxpelt.
221. Do not seize occasions to embarrass yourself or others.
222. Reserve is proof of prudence.
223. Do not be eccentric, neither from affectation nor carelessness.
224. Never take things against the grain, no matter how they come.
225. Know your chief fault.
226. Take care to be obliging. Most talk, and act, not as they are, but as they are obliged.
227. Do not be the slave of first impressions.
228. Do not be a scandalmonger.
229. Plan out your life wisely.
230. Open your eyes early.
231. Never let things be seen half finished.
232. Have a touch of business sense.
233. Do not let the morsels you offer be distasteful.
234. Never trust your honor to another, unless you have his in pledge.
235. Know how to ask.
236. Make an obligation beforehand of what would have to be a reward afterward.
237. Never share the secrets of your superiors.
238. Know what is lacking in yourself.
239. Do not be overly critical.
240. Make use of folly.
241. Put up with mockery but do not practice it yourself.
242. Push advantages.
243. Do not be too much of a dove.
244. Create a feeling of obligation.
245. Have original and out-of-the-way views.
246. Never offer satisfaction unless it is demanded.
247. Know a little more, live a little less.
Some say the opposite.
248. Do not go with the latest speaker.
249. Never begin life with what should end it.
250. When to turn conversation around.
251. Use human means as if there were no divine ones, and divine means as if there were no human ones.
252. Neither belong entirely to yourself nor entirely to others.
253. Do not explain too much.
254. Never despise an evil, however small.
255. Do good a little at a time, but often.
256. Go prepared. Go armed against discourtesy, faithlessness, presumption, and all other kinds of folly.
257. Never let matters come to a braking point.
258. Find someone to share your troubles with.
259. Anticipate injuries and turn them into favors.
260. We belong to no one and no one to us, entirely.
261. Do not follow up a folly.
262. Be able to forget.
263. Many things of taste one should not possess oneself.
264. Have no careless days.
265. Set difficult tasks for those under you.
266. Do not become bad from sheer goodness.
267. Silken words, sugared manners.
268. The wise do at once what the fool does later.
269. Make use of the novelty of your position.
270. Do not condemn alone that which pleases all.
271. In every occupation, if you know little stick to the safe path.
272. Sell things with a tariff of courtesy.
273. Comprehend the disposition of the people you deal with.
274. Be attractive.
275. Join in the game as far as decency permits.
276. Know how to renew your character both with nature and with art.
277. Display yourself.
278. Avoid notoriety in all things.
279. Do not respond to those who contradict you.
280. Be trustworthy.
281. Find favor with people of good sense.
282. Make use of absence to make yourself more esteemed or valued.
283. Have the gift of discovery.
284. Do not be burdensome.
285. Never die of another's bad luck.
286. Do not become responsible for all or for everyone.
287. Never act out of passion.
288. Live for the moment.
289. Nothing depreciates a person more than to show he is just like anyone else.
290. It is a piece of good fortune to combine people's love and respect.
291. Know how to test people.
292. Let your personal qualities surpass the requirements of your office.
293. Maturity.
294. Be moderate in your views.
295. Do not affect what you have not effected.
296. Noble qualities.
297. Always act as if others were watching.
298. Three things go to a prodigy.
299. Leave of hungry.
300. In one word, be a saint.

[From the Great Books Series. Also Read The Success Manual - Encyclopedia of advice. ]