Quotes from Robert Greene

Anger is the most destructive of emotional responses, for

Your most creative years are generally in your late twenties and on into your forties. You can learn what you need through books, your own practice, and occasional advice from others, but the process is hit-and-miss.

Fear is not designed to make us feel that we are fragile creatures in an environment full of danger. Its function is to stimulate powerful physical responses, allowing an animal to retreat in time. After the event, it is supposed to go away. An animal that cannot let go of its fears once the threat is gone will find it hard ro eat and sleep.

In truth, the use of honesty is indeed a power strategy, intended to convince people of one's noble, good-hearted, selfless character. It is a form of persuasion, even a subtle form of coercion. Finally

You will know when your apprenticeship is over by the feeling that you have nothing left to learn in this environment.

Goethe epitomizes what was known in the Renaissance as the Ideal of the Universal Man—a person so steeped in all forms of knowledge that his mind grows closer to the reality of nature itself and sees secrets that are invisible to most people.

Realize this: In your struggle for power you will stir up rivalries and create enemies. There will be people you cannot win over, who will remain your enemies no matter what.

Never discriminate as to whom you study and whom you trust. Never trust anyone completely and study everyone, including friends and loved ones.

This energy was so powerful that it made him swing from one mood or idea to the opposite—from spirituality to sensuality, from naïveté to craftiness. This daemon, he decided, was a spirit implanted in him at birth and it encompassed his whole being. How he managed this daemon would determine the length of his life and the success of his endeavors.

The men who have changed the universe have never gotten there by working on leaders, but rather by moving the masses. Working on leaders is the method of intrigue and only leads to secondary results. Working on the masses, however, is the stroke of genius that changes the face of the world. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 1769-1821

people get the mind and quality of brain that they deserve through their actions in life.

The road to mastery requires patience. You will have to keep your focus on five or ten years down the road, when you will reap the rewards of your efforts. The process of getting there, however, is full of challenges and pleasures.

When you are faced with deficiencies instead of strengths and inclinations, this is the strategy you must assume: ignore your weaknesses and resist the temptation to be more like others. Instead, like Temple Grandin, direct yourself toward the small things you are good at.

Both deliberately and unconsciously, we often develop, a social exterior designed specifically to disguise our weaknesses and lacks. For instance, you may think you are dealing with someone who is tough and cynical, without realizing that deep inside they have a soft sentimental core.

Thus for my own part I have more than once been deceived by the person I loved most and of whose love, above everyone else's, I have been most confident. So that I believe that it may be right to love and serve one person above all others, according to merit and worth, but never to trust so much in this tempting trap of friendship as to have cause to repent of it later on. BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE, 1478-1529

Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure.

Worship Athena, not Ares.

Never try to seduce someone who is of your own type. You will be like two puzzles missing the same parts.

Remember: When searching for suckers, always look for the dissatisfied, the unhappy, the insecure. Such people are riddled with weaknesses and have needs that you can fill. Their neediness is the groove in which you place your thumbnail and turn them at will.

they all possessed that seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to construct the parts properly before it ventures to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole. —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Think of yourself as your own Zen Master. Such masters would beat their pupils and deliberately lead them to points of maximum doubt and inner tension, knowing such moments precede enlightenment.

What you know must translate into action, and action must translate into knowledge. In this way strategy becomes a lifelong challenge and the source of constant pleasure in surmounting difficulties and solving problems.

Warriors focus on what they do have, the strengths that they do possess and that they must use creatively. Knowing when to slow down, to renew, to retrench, they outlast their opponents. They play for the long term.

If you are trying to destroy an enemy who has hurt you, far better to keep him off-guard by feigning friendliness than showing your anger.