Robert Greene Quotes

Understand: your mind is weaker than your emotions. But you become aware of this weakness only in moments of adversity,precisely the time when
you need strength. What best equips you to cope with tthe heat of battle is neither more knowledge nor more intellect. What makes your mind stronger, and more able to control your emotions, is internal discipline and toughness.No one can teach you this skill; you cannot learn it by reading about it. Like any discipline, it can come only through practice, experience, even a little suffering. The first step in building up presence of mind is to see the need for it, to want it badly enough to be willing to work for it.

With such a deep rooted interest you can withstand the setbacks and failures, the days of drudgery, and the hard work that are always a part of any creative action. You can ignore the doubters and critics. You will then feel personally committed to solving the problem and will not rest until you do so.

The feeling that we have endless time to complete our work has an insidious and debilitating effect on our minds.

Our attention and thoughts become diffused.

Our lack of intensity makes it hard for the brain to jolt into a higher gear.

The connections do not occur.

For this purpose you must always try to work with deadlines, whether real or manufactured.

Faced with the slenderest amount of time to reach the end, the mind rises to the level you require.

Ideas crowd upon one another.

Do not waste time on things you cannot change or influence.

Just keep moving.

To help yourself to cultivate serendipity, you should keep a notebook with you at all times. The moment any idea or observation comes, you note it down. You keep the notebook by your bed, careful to record ideas that come in those moments of fringe awareness — just before falling asleep, or just upon waking.

Those qualities that separate us are often ridiculed by others or criticized by teachers.

Because of these judgments, we might see our strengths as disabilities and try to work around them in order to fit in. But anything that is peculiar to our makeup is precisely what we must pay the deepest attention to and lean on in our rise to mastery.

we tend to think of our behavior as largely conscious and willed. To imagine that we are not always in control of what we do is a frightening thought, but in fact it is the reality.

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love. — NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

What people lack in life is not more reality but illusion, fantasy, play.

You cannot make anything worthwhile in this world unless you have first developed and transformed yourself.

Learn to imagine more possibilities than you generally consider. Avoid fixating only on what is present. Ponder what is absent.

friendship and love blind every man to their interests.

Your task as a student of human nature is to recognize and examine the dark side of your character. Once subjected to conscious scrutiny, it loses its destructive power. If you can learn to detect the signs of it in yourself (see the following sections for help on this), you can channel this darker energy into productive activity. You can turn your neediness and vulnerability into empathy. You can channel your aggressive impulses into worthwhile causes and into your work. You can admit your ambitions, your desires for power, and not act so guiltily and stealthily. You can monitor your suspicious tendencies and the projection of your own negative emotions onto others. You can see that selfish and harmful impulses dwell within you as well, that you are not as angelic or strong as you imagine. With this awareness will come balance and greater tolerance for others.

There is nothing more intoxicating than victory, and nothing more dangerous.

The real poetry and beauty in life comes from an intense relationship with reality in all its aspects. Realism is in fact the ideal we must aspire to, the highest point of human rationality.