Robert Greene

you have more to fear from friends than from enemies

Be wary of friends—they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy.

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

Friends often agree on tilings in order to avoid an argument. They cover up their unpleasant qualities so as to not offend each other. They laugh extra hard at each odier's jokes. Since honesty rarely strengthens friendship, you may never know how a friend truly feels. Friends will say that they love your poetry, adore your music, envy your taste in clothesmaybe they mean it, often they do not.

Strangely enough, it is your act of kindness tiiat unbalances everything.

Seducers know that the possibility of pleasure will make a person follow them, and the experience of it will make someone open up, weak to the touch. They also train themselves to be sensitive to pleasure, knowing that feeling pleasure themselves will make it that much easier for them to infect the people around them.

that a woman who is interested in a man wants to see that other women are interested in him, too. Not only does that give him instant value, it makes it all the more satisfying to snatch him from their clutches.

The great questions of the time will be decided, not by speeches and resolutions, but by iron and blood.”

Most people are open books

SNEAK ACROSS THE OCEAN IN BROAD DAYLIGHT

This means to create a front that eventually becomes imbued with an atmosphere or impression of familiarity, within which the strategist may maneuver unseen while all eyes are trained to see obvious familiarities.

“THE THIRTY-SIX STRATEGIES,” QUOTED IN THE JAPANESE ART OF WAR, THOMAS CLEARY, 1991