782 Quotes by Robert Greene

Everything that is rare is expensive: the more you are seen, the more you are heard, and the more ordinary you seem. If you are part of a group, step away for a while and you will be talked about more, and even admired more. Practice absence: scarcity will increase your value.

Truly creative people in all fields can temporarily suspend their ego and simply experience what they are seeing, without the need to assert a judgment, for as long as possible. They are more than ready to find their most cherished opinions contradicted by reality.

In following your inclinations and moving toward mastery, you make a great contribution to society, enriching it with discoveries and insights, and making the most of the diversity in nature and among human society.

Hesitation creates gaps. Boldness obliterates them.

Most people don't have the patience to absorb their minds in the fine points and minutiae that are intrinsically part of their work. They are in a hurry to create effects and make a splash; they think in large brush strokes. Their work inevitably reveals their lack of attention to detail - it doesn't connect deeply with the public, and it feels flimsy.

You cannot hit two targets with one arrow. If your thoughts stray, you miss your enemies’ heart. Mind and arrow must become one.

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.

Self absorption is anti-seductive; it is a sign of insecurity.

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.