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.

Be ostentatious and be seen…. What is not seen is as though it did not exist…. It was light that first caused all creation to shine forth. Display fills up many blanks, covers up deficiencies, and gives everything a second life, especially when it is backed by genuine merit

The mysterious cannot be grasped. And what cannot be seized and consumed creates power.

people or things that cannot be instantly interpreted, seized, and consumed

Everybody steals in commerce and industry.
I’ve stolen a lot myself.
But I know how to steal.

Thomas Edison, 1847–1931