Joaquin Setantí (c. 1540-1617) from Catalonia was one of the earliest masters of the thorny art of aphorisms. Centellas de varios conceptos is a collection of five hundred aphorisms that reveal a modern political and personal attitude that seems to presage Balthasar Gracián’s work and are essential to understanding the sententious literature of the seventeenth century. Joaquin Setantí was an important figure in the early seventeenth-century city of Barcelona and an enthusiast of history and political reflection within the field known as Tacitism. He devoted several literary works to these topics, noteworthy among which for its originality and pre-eminence at the time is the example presented here. This edition offers readers a work that is both little known as well as indispensable in understanding the history of aphorisms and European gnomic literature.