Half a dozen EMPIRES had to join hands to stand a chance against him
Yet his wife slept with other men
The tragic love story of one of the greatest men of all time:
1/ Joséphine
An aristocrat’s daughter, a widow, mother of 2
Also 6 years older than Napoleon
On the marriage certificate, she increased Napoleon’s age by 1.5 years and decreased hers by 4...
Wedding was officiated by an illegitimate priest
Napoleon was just an army officer
2/ Napoleon’s love for her - despite her age, previous children, and his family’s great disapproval - could only be described as wild and profound. From a love letter: “The remembrance of last night’s delirium have robbed my senses of repose. My waking thoughts are all of thee.”
3/ Joséphine hardly ever wrote back
In 1796 Napoleon wrote:
“You do not write me at all, you do not love your husband; you know the pleasure that your letters afford him, and you do not write him six lines of even haphazard scribble.”
Future Emperor, left on “read”
4/ As Napoleon led his men to impossible victories, his spirit stayed agitated and morose
He wrote to Joséphine, telling her he can’t muster a response to “How did you sleep?” without knowing how she slept
He wanted his “genius” to protect HER, and leave him “unguarded”
5/ The thought of Joséphine kept Napoleon sane in the middle of INHUMAN emotional and physical turmoil:
“When I’m weary of the worries of my profession, when men disgust me, when I’m ready to curse my life, I put my hand on my heart where your portrait beats in unison.”
6/ Napoleon was haunted by the suspicion that Joséphine loved him “less” with each passing day
This idea, he wrote, “blights my soul, stops my blood, makes me wretched without even leaving me the courage of fury”
He was right
She was cheating on him immediately after marriage
7/ Napoleon to Joséphine:
“I haven't drunk one cup of tea without cursing the pride and ambition which force me to remain apart from the moving spirit of my life. If I rise to work in the middle of the night, it is because this may hasten by a matter of days our meeting."
8/ Joséphine had the GALL to come visit Napoleon with the man she was cheating on him with
And when Napoleon came for her, she was nowhere to be seen:
“I arrive at Milan, I rush into your apartment, I have left everything to see you, to press you in my arms…you were not there”
9/ Napoleon’s last words: “France, the army, head of the army, Joséphine”
He divorced her
But never got over her
Affairs didn’t help
The pain of not being loved back by her lingered on
I’m reminded of a line from a letter he wrote in 1796: “I had the right to be spared this”
“I had the right to be spared this”
Besides being a heartbroken lover...
Napoleon was an obsessive workaholic, a voracious reader, an incredible ruler, and the scariest general of his time
He also had a golden tongue
I've collected Napoleon's most interesting ideas and sayings here:
There is a reason your creative juices start flowing in airplanes and long road-trips
I call it the "Kinetic Stillness Paradox" and I found this principle at play in the lives of nobodies like:
- JK Rowling
- Charles Darwin
- Albert Einstein
Let's dig in:
1/ 600 million people have read Harry Potter books—where was this iconic character born? In a train, as JK Rowling sat still for 4 hours, too shy to ask someone for a pen, mentally noting all details as the idea “simply fell" into her head
Harry Potter, inception location: train
2/ The theory of evolution rocked the foundations of religion, culture...even politics. Where was Charles Darwin when the eureka moment hit him? A horse-carriage...he remembered the "very spot in the road" 4 decades later
Theory of evolution, inception location: a horse-carriage
1/ Love precedes lovability: "Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her."
1/ Love precedes lovability because a "primary devotion" to a place, thing, or person is the source of the creative energy that transforms it. Begin with love, not scorn. Commitment beautifies
2/ Modern streets are "noisy with taxicabs and motorcars," but that's the noise of "laziness and fatigue," not activity. If everyone walked, streets would be quieter but more alive. Modern thought is like a modern street - noisiness, long words, loud ideas...hiding laziness
You can do almost anything with a phone - and that's Bad, Actually
Because you can do anything, you end up doing nothing
The best tools are constrained and specific. They do you a favor by limiting you...
Thread:
1/ On a typewriter you cannot stream movies, check stock prices, or play online chess. You can only write. On a camera you cannot tweet, google trivia, or order groceries. You can only click. These older tools gave you a tunnel vision that their advanced alternatives just cannot
2/ If the only tool you have is a hammer, then all your problems look like nails. If the only tool you have is a 7 inch flat screen, then all your problems look like pixel arrangement problems. That is Objectively False. Real problems demand more than tapping, clicking, coding
1/ One line from an 1883 philosophy book gets to the heart of the matter: "Of all that is written I love only what a man has written with his blood" (Nietzsche). Writing comes not just from your brain but from your guts, balls, sinews, feelings, blood. AI has none of that
2/ Chesterton wrote in Heretics (1905) that if you want exciting art, you have to go to the ideologues. To the men who have actual convictions. Only a "doctrinaire" - someone with a doctrine, a POV, a set of values - can tell a story worth hearing. A data server has no doctrine
1/ Einstein fell seriously sick at 5. Bed-ridden. His father brought home a toy compass to entertain him. He was transfixed by the magnetic needle. It made him wonder—what were the "deeply hidden" forces controlling the needle...and the world? He spent his life chasing the answer
2/ The Wright brothers were gifted a toy helicopter when they were 7 and 11. They played with it until it broke, and then they built their own model. Years later they credited this toy for sparking off their life-long obsession with flight