“The greatest wrong you can do a man is to show him he cannot be helped.”Baltasar Gracián · Oracolul manual · 1647 · aforismul 289
Never declare a case hopeless: hope fuels effort, and your words can shut it down.
Gracián is talking about hope as a person's last resource. The mechanism: as long as someone believes they can be saved, they keep fighting; a verdict of "beyond help" cuts the engine of effort and condemns them to resignation. Even a harsh diagnosis can be delivered with a door left open. A doctor who says "this is serious, but we still have options" keeps the patient fighting; one who declares the case lost often lets them fade.
Why it matters In hard conversations — with the sick, people in crisis, failing children — choose wording that leaves an exit, however narrow.