Quotes from Robert Greene

Repeated failure will toughen your spirit and show you with absolute clarity how things must be done. In fact, it is a curse to have everything go right on your first attempt. You will fail to question the element of luck, making you think that you have the golden touch. When you do inevitably fail, it will confuse and demoralize you past the point of learning.

Your honesty is likely to offend people; it is much more prudent to tailor your words, telling people what they want to hear rather than the coarse and ugly truth of what you feel or think. More important, by being unabashedly open you make yourself so predictable and familiar that it is almost impossible to respect

Daily Law: Instead of using this remarkable instrument as a means to get attention or to vent your rage and display your superiority, see the internet in this different light—an invitation to a fascinating journey inside a global brain and the surprises it can bring you by roaming freely in this vast space and making surprising connections.

The Laws of Human Nature is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes. If you let it guide you, it will radically alter how you perceive people and your entire approach to dealing with them. It will also radically change how you see yourself.

In dealing with fools you must adopt the following philosophy: they are simply a part of life, like rocks or furniture. All of us have foolish sides, moments in which we lose our heads and think more of our ego or short-term goals. It is human nature. Seeing this foolishness within you, you can then accept it in others. This will allow you to smile at their antics, to tolerate their presence as you would a silly child, and to avoid the madness of trying to change them.

On the other hand, there is the opposing tendency of the brain to want to make connections between everything. This generally occurs among individuals who pursue knowledge far enough that these associations come to

By making yourself aware of the distorting process of the Naïve Perspective, you will naturally grow less comfortable with it. You will realize that you are operating in the dark, blind to people's motivations and intentions, vulnerable to the same mistakes and patterns that occurred in the past.

A reasonable man in love may act like a madman, but he should not and cannot act like an idiot.

Lo que se hace por amor se hace siempre más allá del bien y del mal. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Más allá del bien y del mal

Comprenda que, si bien la audacia no es natural, tampoco lo es la timidez. Ésta no es sino un hábito adquirido, adoptado a partir de un deseo de evitar conflictos. Si la timidez lo domina, extírpela.

Understand: the more you want the prize, the more you must compensate by examining what getting it will take.

Los hombres son más prestos a devolver un agravio que un favor, porque la gratitud es una carga y la venganza un placer. TÁCITO, ca. 55-120 d.C.

Low-grade emotions continually affect our thinking, and they originate from our own impulses—for instance, the desire for pleasing and comforting thoughts. High-grade emotion, however, comes at certain moments, reaches an explosive pitch, and is generally sparked by something external—a person who gets under our skin, or particular circumstances. The level of arousal is higher and our attention is captured completely.

Imagine a person who never develops these acting skills, whose face instantly grimaces when he dislikes what you say or cannot suppress a yawn when you fail to entertain him, who always speaks his mind, who completely goes his own way in his ideas and style, who acts the same whether he's talking to his boss or to a child, and you have imagined a person who would be shunned, ridiculed, and despised.

Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.

This cycle is bound to happen again and again, is part of human nature. The irrational simply, just changes it's look and fashions.

First, the Laws will work to transform you into a calmer and more strategic observer of people, helping to free you from all the emotional drama that needlessly drains you.

Napoleón: cubrir tu mano de hierro con un guante de terciopelo.

To begin this process, you need to train yourself to pay less attention to the words that people say and greater attention to their tone of voice, the look in their eye, their body language—all signals that might reveal a nervousness or excitement that is not expressed verbally. If you can get people to become emotional, they will reveal a lot more.

While a friend expects more and more favors, and seethes with jealousy, these former enemies expected nothing and got everything.

Mira hasta el final, sea lo que fuere lo que estés contemplando. A menudo Dios otorga al hombre un breve instante de felicidad, para luego arruinarlo por completo.

But this means that he will be disliked on account of his superiority; and if a man is to be liked, he must really be inferior in point of intellect. ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, 1788–1860

Leonardo was eager to learn all of these skills, but soon he discovered in himself something else: he could not simply do an assignment; he needed to make it something of his own, to invent rather than imitate the Master.

Often it is the quiet ones, those who give out less at first glance, who hide greater depths, and who secretly wield greater power.