Authors — Quotes

Graham Greene Quotes: 32

They are always saying God loves us. If that's love I'd rather have a bit of kindness.
The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.
The End of the Affair
Like some wines our love could neither mature nor travel.
The Comedians
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
Ways Of Escape
It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.
The End of the Affair
A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.
The End of the Affair
I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing.
The End of the Affair
But it is impossible to go through life without trust; that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
The Ministry of Fear
I don't care a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations...I don't think even my country means all that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren't there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?
Our Man in Havana
I hate you, God. I hate you as though you actually exist.
The End of the Affair
Her face looked ugly in the attempt to avoid tears; it was an ugliness which bound him to her more than any beauty could have done. It isn't being happy together, he thought as though it were a fresh discovery, that makes one love--it's being unhappy together.
The Ministry of Fear
You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.
Brighton Rock
Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance.
The Heart of the Matter
Time has its revenges, but revenge seems so often sour. Wouldn’t we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife with a husband, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that’s why men have invented God – a being capable of understanding.
The Quiet American
Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation.
She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my own death, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs.
I have never understood why people who can swallow the enormous improbability of a personal God boggle at a personal Devil.
There was a tacit understanding between them that 'liquor helped'; growing more miserable with every glass one hoped for the moment of relief.
The Heart of the Matter
If I stopped loving Him, I would cease to believe in His love. If I loved God, then I would believe in His love for me. It's not enough to need it. We have to love first, and I don't know how. But I need it, how I need it.
Hope was an instinct only the reasoning human mind could kill. An animal never knew despair.
The Power and the Glory
Thought's a luxury. Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and Democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night?
The Quiet American
He gave her a bright fake smile; so much of life was a putting off of unhappiness for another time. Nothing was ever lost by delay. He had a dim idea that perhaps if one delayed long enough, things were taken out of one's hands altogether by death.
The Heart of the Matter
He's satisfied with himself. If you have a soul you can't be satisfied.
Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party
We are all resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to.
The Heart of the Matter
A brain is only capable of what it could conceive, andit couldnt concieve what it hasnt experienced
Brighton Rock
She was not too young to be wise, but she was too young to know that wisdom shouldn't be spoken aloud when you are happy.
Loser Takes All
You must promise me. You can't desire the end without desiring the means.'Ah, but one can, he thought, one can: one can desire the peace of victory without desiring the ravaged towns.
The Heart of the Matter
I know one thing you don't. I know the difference between Right and Wrong. They didn't teach you that at school.'Rose didn't answer; the woman was quite right: the two words meant nothing to her. Their taste was extinguished by stronger foods--Good and Evil.
Brighton Rock
She couldn't avoid being serious about things she cared for, and happiness made her grave at the thought of all the things which might destroy it.
A Gun for Sale
What are we doing to each other? Because I know that I am doing to him exactly what he is doing to me. We are sometimes so happy, and never in our lives have we known more unhappiness.
The End of the Affair
If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another name?
Knowledge was the great thing--not abstract knowledge in which Dr. Forester had been so rich, the theories which lead one enticingly on with their appearance of nobility, of transcendent virtue, but detailed, passionate, trivial human knowledge.
The Ministry of Fear