Keep your friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent
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.
Many a serious thinker has been produced in prisons, where we have nothing to do but think.
There is nothing more intoxicating than victory, and nothing more dangerous.
...But the human tongue is a beast that few can master. It strains constantly to break out of its cage, and if it is not tamed, it will tun wild and cause you grief.
Lord, protect me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies.
Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter
Never waste valuable time, or mental peace of mind, on the affairs of others—that is too high a price to pay.
For the future, the motto is, "No days unalert.
When our emotions are engaged, we often have trouble seeing things as they are.
Despise The Free Lunch
Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content, The quiet mind is richer than a crown...
A Prince asked the dying spanish statesman, "Does your Excellency forgive all your enemies?" "I do not have to forgive all my enemies," answered the stateman, "I have had them all shot.
People are more complicated than the masks they wear in society.
Be Royal in your Own Fashion: Act like a King to be treated
12--Lose Battles, But Win The War: Grand Strategy Grand strategy is the art of looking beyond the present battle and calculating ahead. Focus on your ultimate goal and plot to reach it.
The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.
No one is really going to help you or give you direction. In fact, the odds are against you.
Never whine, never complain, never try to justify yourself.
Person who cannot control his words shows that he cannot control himself, and is unworthy of respect.
The time that leads to mastery is dependent on the intensity of our focus.
Nothing is stable in the realm of power, and even closest of friends can be transformed into the worst of enemies.
The human tongue is a beast that few can master.
The key to power, then, is the ability to judge who is best able to further your interests in all situations. Keep friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent.
Friendship and love blind every man to their interests.
Do not fight them. Instead think of them the way you think of children, or pets, not important enough to affect your mental balance
Your fears are a kind of prison that confines you within a limited range of action. The less you fear, the more power you will have and the more fully you will live.
The passive ironic attitude is not cool or romantic, but pathetic and destructive.
An emotional response to a situation is the single greatest barrier to power, a mistake that will cost you a lot more than any temporary satisfaction you might gain by expressing your feelings.
All masters want to appear more brilliant than other people.
When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet.
Never be distracted by people’s glamorous portraits of themselves and their lives; search and dig for what really imprisons them.
It is in fact the height of selfishness to merely consume what others create and to retreat into a shell of limited goals and immediate pleasures.
Any titles, money, or privilege you inherit are actually hindrances. They delude you into believing you are owed respect.
He who poses as a fool is not a fool.
Become who you are by learning who you are.
If, for example, you are miserly by nature, you will never go beyond a certain limit; only generous souls attain greatness.
There is too little mystery in the world; too many people say exactly what they feel or want.
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.
Our natural tendency is to project onto other people our own belief and value systems, in ways in which we are not even aware.
Events in life mean nothing if you do not reflect on them in a deep way, and ideas from books are pointless if they have no application to life as you live it.
Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others’ experience.
You may think that what you’d like to recapture from your youth is your looks, your physical fitness, your simple pleasures, but what you really need is the fluidity of mind you once possessed.
Religion is the great balm of existence because it takes us outside ourselves, connects us to something larger
The problem is that we humans are deep conformists.
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Hide your intentions not by closing up (with the risk of appearing secretive, and making people suspicious) but by talking endlessly about your desires and goals-just not the real ones.
Actually, your past successes are your biggest obstacle: every battle, every war, is different, and you cannot assume that what worked before will work today.
It is your own bad strategies, not the unfair opponent, that are to blame for your failures. You are responsible for the good and bad in your life.
Who can you trust?
The truth is that creative activity is one that involves the entire self - our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds.
Real action and true helpfulness are perhaps the ultimate charm.
When you turn your back on someone, they come running after you.
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.
You must understand the following: In order to master a field, you must love the subject and feel a profound connection to it. Your interest must transcend the field itself and border on the religious.
It is time to reverse this prejudice against conscious effort and to see the powers we gain through practice and discipline as eminently inspiring and even miraculous.
Through continual exposure to people and by attempting to think inside of them we can gain an increasing sense of their perspective, but this requires effort on our part.
Sometimes any emotion is better than the boredom of security.
Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.
When the snipe and the mussel struggle, the fisherman gets the benefit. Ancient Chinese saying
If you lead the sucker down a familiar path, he won't catch on when you lead him into a trap.
Our successes and failures in life can be traced to how well or how badly we deal with the inevitable conflicts that confront us in society.
Everything that happens to you is a form of instruction if you pay attention.
If no resistances or obstacles face you, you must create them. No seduction can proceed without them.
The mighty lion toys with the mouse that crosses his path—any other reaction would mar his fearsome reputation.
Never take your position for granted and never let any favors you receive go to your head.
Such is the fate, in some form or other, of all those who unbalance the master’s sense of self, poke holes in his vanity, or make him doubt his pre-eminence.
Fear creates its own self-fulfilling dynamic- as people give into it, they lose energy and momentum. Their lack of confidence translates into inaction that lowers confidence levels even further, on and on.
You cannot repress anger or love, or avoid feeling them, and you should not try.
Power is a game, and in games you do not judge your opponents by their intentions but by the effects of their actions.
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Never argue. In society nothing must be discussed; give only results. (Benjamin Disraeli, 1804–1881)
As Gracián said, “The truth is generally seen, rarely heard.
If you allow yourself to learn who you really are by paying attention to that voice and force within you, then you can become what you were fated to become—an individual, a Master.
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For what the leaders are, that, as a rule, will the men below them be. —Xenophon (430?–355? B.C.)
Creative Endeavors are by their nature uncertain.
The only means to gain one’s ends with people are force and cunning. Love also, they say; but that is to wait for sunshine, and life needs every moment. JOHANN VON GOETHE, 1749-1832
The people with money were meddling in mechanical and design affairs. They were interjecting their mediocre ideas into the process and polluting it.
It is not much good being wise among fools and sane among lunatics.
Power rarely ends up in the hands of those who start a revolution, or even those who further it; power sticks to those who bring it to a conclusion
In the end, the money and success that truly last come not to those who focus on such things as goals, but rather to those who focus on mastery and fulfilling their Life’s Task.
Little about your work, tease and titillate with alluring, even contradictory comments, then stand back and let others try to make sense of it all.
Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; and if it is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach. —MARCUS AURELIUS
Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.
Understand: we live in the world of a sad separation that began some five hundred years ago when art and science split apart.
Person who cannot control his words shows that he cannot control himself,
The best way to neutralize our natural impatience is to cultivate a kind of pleasure in pain—like an athlete, you come to enjoy rigorous practice, pushing past your limits, and resisting the easy way out.
Twere sin to stain fair Venus' courts with blood
You are like a hunter: your knowledge of every detail of the forest and of the ecosystem as a whole will give you many more options for survival and success.
I give my mind the liberty to follow the first wise or foolish idea that presents itself,
The need for certainty is the greatest disease the mind faces.
Moving towards mastery will naturally bring you a more global outlook, but it is always wise to expedite the process by training yourself early on to continually enlarge your perspective.
PSYCHOLOGY OF LOVE, TRANSLATED BY JOAN RIVIÈRE
The pain is kind of challenge your mind presents - will you learn how to focus and move past boredom, or like a child will you succumb to the need for immediate pleasure and distraction?
Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure. TACITUS, c. A.D. 55-120
You must be the mirror, training your mind to try to see yourself as others see you.
Keep friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent.
Tweere sin to stain fair Venus' courts with blood
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
Our levels of desire, patience, persistence, and confidence end up playing a much larger role in success than sheer reasoning powers.
