“Premeditation of death is premeditation of freedom… He who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. Knowing how to die frees us from all subjection and constraint.”
Michel De Montaigne, via The Daily Laws (Page 453)
Quotes from The Daily Laws
“There is much in life we cannot control, with death as the ultimate example of this. We will experience illness and physical pain. We will go through separations with people. We will face failures from our own mistakes and the nasty malevolence of our fellow humans. And our task is to accept these moments and even embrace them, not for the pain but for the opportunities to learn and strengthen ourselves. In doing so, we affirm life itself, accepting all of its possibilities.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 449)
“You create the rich or arid landscape of your brain. If you constrict your thoughts to the same obsessions, to the tiny realm of your smartphone, that is the world the you create for yourself. What a waste of this magnificent instrument that you have inherited! But if you attempt to move in the opposite direction, you will notice the opposite dynamic—continual expansion, mental doors opening up in every direction, creative connections and new ideas flooding your brain. You will not want to stop exploring, because your exploration becomes a continuous source of pleasure for the restless energy of the human mind.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 448)
“The time that you’re alive is the only thing you truly possess, and you can give it away. You can give it away by working for other people—they own your time and you can be miserable. You can give it away by reaching for external pleasures and distractions—spending the time that you have as a slave to different passions and different obsessions. Or you can make the time that you’re alive your own.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 426)
“For it’s always that way with the sacred value of life. We forget it as long as it belongs to us, and give it as little attention during the unconcerned hours of our life as we do the stars in the light of day. Darkness must fall before we are aware of the majesty of the stars above our heads.”
Stefan Zweig, via The Daily Laws (Page 423)
“Whereas all the other animals have their heads low, eyes fixed upon the ground, the god desired to give to man a sublime face, a face that could raise its eyes to the heavens above, contemplating the very stars in the sky.”
Ovid, via The Daily Laws (Page 421)
“You determine the quality of your mind by the nature of your daily thoughts. If they circle around the same obsessions and dramas, you create an arid and monotonous mental landscape, and this secretly makes you miserable. Instead, you must seek to radiate your mind outward, to unleash your imagination and intensify your experience of life.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 417)
“Operating with a high sense of purpose is a force multiplier. All of your decisions and actions have greater power behind them because they are guided by a central idea and purpose. The many sides to your character are channeled into this purpose, giving you more sustained energy. Your focus and your ability to bound back from adversity give you ineluctable momentum. You can ask more of yourself.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 410)
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, via The Daily Laws (Page 410)
“We are all narcissists, some deeper on the spectrum than others. Our mission in life is to come to terms with this self-love and learn how to turn our sensitivity outward, towards others, instead of inward.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 409)
“We like to focus on the psychological health of individuals, and how perhaps a therapist could fix any problems they might have. What we don’t consider, however, is that being in a dysfunctional group can actually make individuals unstable and neurotic. The opposite is true as well: by participating in a high-functioning reality group, we can make ourselves healthy and whole.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 408)
“The true self of each person is the mind. Know therefore that you are a god. For a god is someone who moves, who feels, who remembers, who looks to the future, who rules over and guides and directs the body he is master of, just as that Supreme God directs the universe. And just as this eternal God controls the universe, which is partly mortal, so too your eternal spirit directs your fragile body.”
Cicero, via The Daily Laws (Page 403)
“If you stay too long in the imagination phase, what you create will tend to be grandiose and detached from reality. If you only listen to feedback and try to make the work a complete reflection of what others tell you or want, the work will be conventional and flat. By maintaining a continual dialogue between reality (feedback) and your imagination, you will create something practical and powerful.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 401)
“By accepting people, by understanding and if possible even loving them for their human nature, we can liberate our minds from obsessive and petty emotions. We can stop reacting to everything people do and say. We can have some distance and stop ourselves from taking everything personally. Mental space is freed up for higher pursuits. Once we feel the exhilarating power from this new attitude, we will want to take it as far as possible.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 399)
“The future of the human race will likely depend on our ability to transcend this tribalism and to see our fate as interconnected with everyone else’s. We are one species, all descendants of the same original humans, all brothers and sisters. Our differences are mostly an illusion. Imagining differences is part of the madness of groups.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 394)
“Don’t allow yourself to engage in fantasies about other projects on the horizon. You want to channel this grandiose energy by absorbing yourself in your work as deeply as possible.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 393)
“‘Turst your feelings!’ —But feelings are nothing final or original; behind feelings there stand judgments and evaluations which we inherit in the form of… inclinations, aversions. The inspiration born of a feeling is the grandchild of a judgment—and often of a false judgment!—and in any event not a child of your own! To trust one’s feelings—means to give more obedience to one’s grandfather and grandmother and their grandparents than to the god which are in us: our reason and our experience.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, via The Daily Laws (Page 387)
“Your obstacles are not rivers or mountains or other people; your obstacle is yourself.”
Xenophon, via The Daily Laws (Page 380)
“Life is battle and struggle, and you will constantly find yourself facing bad situations, destructive relationships, dangerous engagements. How you confront these difficulties will determine your fate. If you feel lost and confused, if you lose your sense of direction, if you cannot tell the difference between friend and foe, you have only yourself to blame. Everything depends on your frame of mind and on how you look at the world. A shift of perspective can transform you from a passive and confused mercenary into a motivated and creative fighter.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 380)
“People tend to hide their problems and to put their best face forward. We only see and hear of their triumphs, their new relationships, their brilliant ideas that will land them a gold mine. If we move closer—if we saw the quarrels that go on behind closed doors or the horrible boss that goes with that new job—we would have less reason to feel envy. Nothing is ever so perfect as it seems, and often we would see that we are mistaken if we only looked closely enough.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 377)