Machiavelli's friend, the statesman and historian Francesco Guicciardini, devoted some thoughts to the subject in his Ricordi, while the dangers of giving advice are touched on by the early 17th-century Spanish Jesuit, Baltasar Gracián, in his book The Oracle – possibly the best guide to the art of survival in tricky times ever written.
That may be something to which Mr Ellison, America's unlikely new shareholder champion, needs to devote some thought.
If it were true, as we have mentioned more than once previously, that (functional, aesthetic, social) order did not, in the past evolution of the human species, constitute a spontaneous event but the outcome of a project, then we would need to devote some thought to this.
I'd never devoted any thought to it until I saw its picture in Chicago.
In the interest of pragmatism, Drèze and Sen might have devoted more thought to how to make India's existing social-welfare initiatives work better.
I was a teen-ager at the time and, until then, I'd never devoted much thought to what makes us who we are.
In recent seasons this superb guitarist has devoted considerable thought to her programming, generally building it around themes that let her explore unusual repertory corners.
"PRIVATE-equity firms are only now starting to do aggressive branding," says David Rubenstein, boss of the Carlyle Group, a top private-equity company that has probably devoted more thought to its brand strategy than anyone else in the industry.
At 36, Mr. Harding is thin, just beyond boyish and conducts with a balletic flair, but he clearly has devoted considerable thought to Mahler's music and what makes it work.
There is no hint from the Administration that, when it speaks of two states, it has devoted much thought to the integration that the states would have to cultivate along with their national homes.
Men whose lives had been devoted to thought, who had tried mightily to govern the disorder of public life, to put it under some sort of intellectual authority, to get ideas to save mankind or to offer it mental aid in saving itself, would suddenly turn into gruesome idiots.
