Influence: How to Exert It by Yoritomo-Tashi

Summary

Influence: How to Exert It is a 1916 self-help classic with a literary mystery at its center. The book was published under the name "Yoritomo-Tashi" — presented to readers as the wisdom of a great Japanese Shogun — but scholars have since established that "Yoritomo-Tashi" was actually a fictional persona created by a French woman named Berthe Blanchard, who used "B. Dangennes" as one of her pseudonyms. Whether the book's argument came from a 12th-century statesman or an early 20th-century Frenchwoman, the ideas hold: true influence isn't force or manipulation — it's the quiet, cultivated power of someone who has mastered their own mind, presence, and persuasion. Blanchard/Yoritomo argues that some people command rooms and change minds effortlessly while others build elaborate "stairways to nowhere," and that the difference is a skill you can actually study.

hailo's annotations

"Are there not many persons who pass their lives in building by slow stages a stairway that leads nowhere, and who do not perceive the fact until the work is finished?" (22)

"For wise men know the inanity of the word 'perfection'; perfection can not exist, since it can not be absolute and is always debatable, following the bent of differing tastes or the application of doctrines." (25)

"Another variety of the agents of bad persuasion are those persons we call pessimists, whom Yoritomo describes thus:

'One should flee those who are created with life which makes one think only of the stupor of death... Their souls are always in the state where one finds the body in the tomb; every effort seems useless to them, or rather, they prefer to make a show of that indifference which makes the gestures necessary to obtain the accomplishments they pretend to despise... Despise them indeed? Do they not feel, rather a malicious joy in demoralizing others? They like to consider man as fundamentally bad, and to declare that the slumber of the dead is the superior of all other pleasures... That is true only regarding those who, as we have said, pass through life as they were already dead. They would be right, perhaps, if one heard only through pleasures of the gross, earthly joys of existence. But for those that know how to see, the joy of living is in all things, and we can taste it, even in the midst of the greatest afflictions." (35)

"One never gains the sympathy of those whose opinions he does not share...one must banish suspicions and know how to listen." (41)

"A destroyed happiness may prove a kind of blessing, if one knows how to gather up the pieces." (42)

"Almost always we are the architects of our own fortunes; it is in working at them without respite that we may model them if not wholly according to our wish, at least in a way somewhat approaching it." (43)

"Let us not forget also that personal invluence radiates more certainly when it manifests itself under the form of altruism, charity, and kindness." (80)

"Perseverance is the triumph of will-power over the weakness of the will..." (128)

".. They balance themselves on the shaky stones almost on tiptoe and advance onto the next step" (129)

"But he should not think of going back, for the branches grow again and he would find the way close." (132)

"The road on which you walk may, perhaps not lead you where you wished to go. But probably it will lead you to a better place." (133)