Quotes from Robert Greene

You choose to let things bother you. You can just as easily choose not to notice the irritating offender, to consider the matter trivial and unworthy of your interest. That is the powerful move. What you do not react to cannot drag you down in a futile engagement. Your pride is not involved. The best lesson you can teach an irritating gnat is to consign it to oblivion by ignoring it.

For the future, the motto is, "No days unalert.

The time that leads to mastery is dependent on the intensity of our focus.

Few are born bold. Even Napoleon had to cultivate the habit on the battlefield, where he knew it was a matter of life and death. In social settings he was awkward and timid, but he overcame this and practice boldness in every part of his life because he saw its tremendous power, how it could literally enlarge a man(even one who, like Napoleon, was in fact conspicuously small).

Despise The Free Lunch

Be Royal in your Own Fashion: Act like a King to be treated

People are more complicated than the masks they wear in society.

Sadness of any sort is also seductive, particularly if it seems deep-rooted, even spiritual, rather than needy or pathetic—it makes people come to you.

If you're really driven and you want something deep, hard enough in life, you're going to get it.

Do not leave your reputation to chance or gossip; it is your life's artwork, and you must craft it, hone it, and display it with the care of an artist.

Remember: your bosses prefer to keep you in dependent positions. It is in their interest that you do not become self-reliant, and so they will tend to hoard information. You must secretly work against this and seize this information for yourself.

Playing with appearances and mastering the arts of deception are among the aesthetic pleasures of life. They are also key components in the acquisition of power.

Do not envy those who seem to be naturally gifted; it is often a curse, as such types rarely learn the value of diligence and focus, and they pay for this later in life.

No one's really taking it seriously enough, being more kind of careful and cautious in planning your life out and trying to reach a goal. It takes a great deal of effort - and this cannot be taught.

When there are no other options, people fight harder. If the choice is life or death they have nothing to lose.

Female psychotic bosses can be particularly devilish. They will tend to mix in a lot of passive aggression, making you feel guilty for all kinds of things.

Every couple of years when your book comes out then you have to go into these fights with the publisher and the publicist and then maybe I bring sort of my knowledge of power into play.

Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense.

I went to an extreme for literary purposes because I felt all the self-help books out there were so gooey and Pollyanna-ish and nauseating. It was making me angry.

Remember that the essence of authority is that people willingly follow your lead.

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable.

I just know who I am and what's comfortable for me and I don't personally do things in life because others do it or because that's what society tells me I should do.

You must keep raising this game to higher and higher levels, as on the pool table - mastering eventually the psychological angles. Your playing is a pleasure, all the way to the end, to death, when the game is over.

Smooth functioning of social life has always depended on the recognition of certain basic limits to behavior. We cannot simply say or do anything we wish, or offend people, without paying consequences - isolation, ostracism, etc.