Napoleon on why great people don't hate

Discover Napoleon's insights on success, what he read, and more.👇

Napoleon knew that circumstances were all important: "Men, like paintings, need a favorable day. " It is wise to "profit" while fortune shines on you and be wary about its caprice as it can "change out of spite."

Seasons and cycles are built into nature. To try to rush a tree is to end up with unripe fruit. Napoleon on patience: "Impatience is a great obstacle to success; he who treats everything with brusqueness gathers nothing, or only immature fruit which will never ripen."

Napoleon was obsessed with the ancient world and how it became modern: He said: "Nothing is more curious, or less known, than the change from the old way of life to the new, than the transition from the ancient political bodies to the new ones that were founded on their ruins."

Cruelty, even when needed, should be used sparingly. Napoleon: "Great men are never cruel without necessity. In war as in politics, no evil, even if it is permissible under the rules, is excusable unless it is absolutely necessary. Everything beyond that is a crime."

Napoleon believed there is something mystical behind the achievement of great goals: "It is for the sake of a remote, indeterminate goal, which they themselves do not fully apprehend, that men become heroes and that the inspired minority triumphs over the inert masses."

Napoleon on how great men are incapable of hate: "Remember that a man, a true man, never hates. His rages and his bad moods never last beyond the present moment—like electric shocks. A statesman’s heart must be in his head." Hate consumes energy which is better used elsewhere...

To get the respect of people, do what's useful for them in the long term: "If the people notices that, instead of doing what is useful to it, its rulers seek to please it, inevitably it comes to look upon itself as sovereign and retains but scant respect for the government."

Napoleon notes the two distinct sides of his personality: "There are two distinct persons in me—thinking man and feeling man. In my family circle, I am the feeling man: I play with the children, I chat with my wife, I read aloud to them from novels."

Napoleon wonders about life, the universe, & everything in between in a letter to his wife: "What is the future? What the past? What are we? What is this magic fluid that envelops us and hides from us what most we need to know? We are born, we live, we die surrounded by wonder."

Keep reading...here are Napoleon's insights on how logic loses wars and beyond:

https://memod.com/jashdholani/napoleon-s-aphorisms-2-4288

Napoleon on how LOGIC loses wars and more Introduction. Honoré de Balzac, one of the most prominent French writers of the