| {"text": "### Book:Robert Greene"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:Joost Elffers"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:PREFACE"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:The feeling of having no power over people and events is generally"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:unbearable to us—when we feel helpless we feel miserable. No one"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:wants less power; everyone wants more. In the world today, however, it"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:is dangerous to seem too power hungry, to be overt with your power"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:moves. We have to seem fair and decent. So we need to be subtle—"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:congenial yet cunning, democratic yet devious."} | |
| {"text": ""} | |
| {"text": "### Book:This game of constant duplicity most resembles the power dynamic"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:that existed in the scheming world of the old aristocratic court."} | |
| {"text": "### Book:Throughout history, a court has always formed itself around the person in"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:power—king, queen, emperor, leader. The courtiers who filled this court"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:were in an especially delicate position: They had to serve their masters,"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:but if they seemed to fawn, if they curried favor too obviously, the other"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:courtiers around them would notice and would act against them."} | |
| {"text": "### Book:Attempts to win the master’s favor, then, had to be subtle. And even"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:skilled courtiers capable of such subtlety still had to protect themselves"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:from their fellow courtiers, who at all moments were scheming to push"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:them aside."} | |
| {"text": "### Book:Meanwhile the court was supposed to represent the height of"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:civilization and refinement. Violent or overt power moves were frowned"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:upon; courtiers would work silently and secretly against any among them"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:who used force. This was the courtier’s dilemma: While appearing the"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:very paragon of elegance, they had to outwit and thwart their own"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:opponents in the subtlest of ways. The successful courtier learned over"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:time to make all of his moves indirect; if he stabbed an opponent in the"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:back, it was with a velvet glove on his hand and the sweetest of smiles"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:on his face. Instead of using coercion or outright treachery, the perfect"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:courtier got his way through seduction, charm, deception, and subtle"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:strategy, always planning several moves ahead. Life in the court was a"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:never-ending game that required constant vigilance and tactical thinking."} | |
| {"text": "### Book:It was civilized war."} | |
| {"text": ""} | |
| {"text": "### Book:Today we face a peculiarly similar paradox to that of the courtier:"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:Everything must appear civilized, decent, democratic, and fair. But if we"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:play by those rules too strictly, if we take them too literally, we are"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:crushed by those around us who are not so foolish. As the great"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:Renaissance diplomat and courtier Niccolò Machiavelli wrote, “Anyman who"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:great number who are not good.” The court imagined itself the pinnacle"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:of refinement, but underneath its glittering surface a cauldron of dark"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:emotions—greed, envy, lust, hatred—boiled and simmered. Our world"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:today similarly imagines itself the pinnacle of fairness, yet the same ugly"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:emotions still stir within us, as they have forever. The game is the same."} | |
| {"text": "### Book:Outwardly, you must seem to respect the niceties, but inwardly, unless"} | |
| {"text": "### Book:you are a fool, you learn quickly to be"} | |