You can die from someone else's misery — emotional states are as infectious as diseases. You may feel you are helping the drowning man but you are precipitating your own disaster. The unfortunate sometimes draw misfortune on themselves; they will also draw it on you. Associate with the happy and fortunate instead.
Robert GreeneAh! what is love! It is a pretty thing, As sweet unto a shepherd as a king, And sweeter too; For kings have cares that wait upon a crown, And cares can make the sweetest love to frown.
Robert GreeneThere is a tremendous problem in modern culture. We have become used to everything coming to us with tremendous speed and ease. It is a culture where discipline and patience is almost impossible to develop.
Robert GreeneThe pyramid would start at the bottom: you don't know who you are or what you're intended to do in life. And so, the X factor - the ingredient that will make you powerful, that will make you successful is your energy and drive and your tenacity. If you've got that, there's nothing in the world that's going to stop you.
Robert GreeneYou're not going to be persistent and tenacious enough if you don't love what you're doing. If it's not something that excites you, that appeals to you deep down inside.
Robert GreeneMany a serious thinker has been produced in prisons, where we have nothing to do but think.
Robert GreeneActually learning ancient Greek was a brilliant practice of mine because you'd sit there and you'd read a sentence and sometimes it would take you a day, an entire day to figure out one sentence. But it really trains you to be analytical, to think in a certain way to try and interpret what something means. So I've been thinking like that my whole life and then I love Machiavelli and I love thinking about politics that way. So it's sort of all that put together and then the good luck to meet a man who is sort of interested in the same thing.
Robert Greene