Sublime

The first step towards getting into a passion is to announce that you are in a passion. By this means you begin the conflict with command over your temper, for one has to regulate one’s passion to the exact point that is necessary and no further. This is the art of arts in falling into and getting out of a rage. You should know how and when best to

“El buen caminante no deja huellas”, no era un sutil koan1 sino un consejo de entrenamiento real y concreto.

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 he

For though it is important to know all, it is not necessary to know all about all.

Let every one have before his mind the chief of his calling not so much to follow him as to spur himself on.

It is a great misfortune to be of use to nobody; scarcely less to be of use to everybody.

Throughout his life, Leon Battista Alberti was concerned with becoming his optimal self. Known to us primarily as the fifteenth century humanist philosopher, Alberti’s De iciarchia (‘On the Man of Excellence and Ruler of His Family’) became a central text in defining the bourgeoning worldview of the courtier polymath. His famous declaration ‘a man