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Graham Greene

Graham Greene Quotes

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Famous Graham Greene Quotes

“I could have waited years, now that I knew the end of the story. I was cold and wet and very happy. I could even look with charity towards the altar and the figure dangling there. She loves us both, I thought, but if there is to be a conflict between an image and a man, I know who will win. I could put my hand on her thigh or my mouth on her breast; he was imprisoned behind the altar and couldn't move to plead his cause.”

IfsKnowsMenYearsLooksEndsStoriesHandsMovingWinningCausesBehindsFiguresColdConflictMouthsCharityBreastsWetVery HappyAltarsThighs
Author:Graham Greene
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“I want men to admire me, but that's a trick you learn at school--a movement of the eyes, a tone of voice, a touch of the hand on the shoulder or the head. If they think you admire them, they will admire you because of your good taste, and when they admire you, you have an illusion for a moment that there's something to admire.”

IfsThinkingMenWantMomentsHandsEyeSchoolVoiceMovementTasteIllusionTricksShouldersAdmireToneGood TasteAdmire You
Book:The End of the Affair
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“Sometimes I get so tired of trying to convince him that I love him and shall love him for ever. He pounces on my words like a barrister and twists them. I know he is afraid of that desert which would be around him if our love were to end, but he can't realise that I feel exactly the same. What he says aloud, I say to myself silently and write it here.”

IfsKnowsFeelsWritingTryingEndsSometimesWould BeRealizingTiredDesertConvinceOur LoveTwistsI Love HimBarristersTired Of Trying
Author:Graham Greene
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“I’m not at peace anymore. I just want him like I used to in the old days. I want to be eating sandwiches with him. I want to be drinking with him in a bar. I’m tired and I don’t want anymore pain. I want Maurice. I want ordinary corrupt human love. Dear God, you know I want to want Your pain, but I don’t want it now. Take it away for a while and give it me another time.”

KnowsWantGivingHumansPainUsedEatingOrdinaryTiredDrinkingDearBarsSandwichesOld DaysI'm TiredWant HimDear GodAnother TimeHuman Love
Author:Graham Greene
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“Perhaps the sexual life is the great test. If we can survive it with charity to those we love and with affection to those we have betrayed, we needn't worry so much about the good and the bad in us. But jealousy, distrust, cruelty, revenge, recrimination ... then we fail. The wrong is in that failure even if we are the victims and not the executioners. Virtue is no excuse.”

IfsLife IsWorryVirtueFailingTestsVictimCharityAffectionExcuseRevengeCrueltyDistrustBetrayedNo ExcusesThose We LoveExecutioners
Book:The Comedians
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“What an unbearable creature he must have been in those days--and yet in those days he had been comparatively innocent. That was another mystery: it sometimes seemed to him that venial sins--impatience, an unimportant lie, pride, a neglected opportunity--cut you off from grace more completely than the worst sins of all. Then, in his innocence, he had felt no love for anyone; now in his corruption he had learnt.”

Has BeensSometimesLyingOpportunityFeltSinGraceCuttingMysteryWorstPrideCreaturesCorruptionInnocentInnocenceUnbearableNeglectedImpatienceUnimportantNo Love
Book:The Power and the Glory
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“So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends.”

WritingMayHas BeensDoneProblemMovingChanceSituationAirDependsReturnConversationTaxesFlowPlanningIncomeMoving ForwardStreamsUnconsciousHopelessShoppingProblem SolvingDesksIncome TaxBlockedSuperficialityTax ReturnsPlanning AheadImpasse
Book:The End of the Affair
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“How often the priest had heard the same confession--Man was so limited: he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died: the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater the glory lay around the death; it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or civilization--it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.”

MenWorldChildrenHomeBeautifulDiesEvilEasyChristAnimalHalfSawsGreaterHeardThis WorldNeededCivilizationGloryDiedLaysVicesPriestsConfessionHeartedIngenuityHalf Hearted
Book:The Power and the Glory
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“It infuriated him to think that there were still people in the state who believed in a loving and merciful God. There are mystics who are said to have experienced God directly. He was a mystic, too, and what he had experienced was vacancy--a complete certainty in the existence of a dying, cooling world, of human beings who had evolved from animals for no purpose at all.”

PeopleThinkingWorldHumansSaidStillsStatesPurposeHuman BeingsAnimalExistenceDyingCertaintyMysticMercifulCoolingVacancyMerciful God
Book:The Power and the Glory
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“Life would go out in a 'fraction of a second' (that was the phrase), but all night he had been realizing that time depends on clocks and the passage of light. There were no clocks and the light wouldn't change. Nobody really knew how long a second of pain could be. It might last a whole purgatory--or for ever.”

LongWholeLightMightPainLastsNightRealizingDependsClockPhrasesPassagesAll NightFractionsPurgatory
Book:The Power and the Glory
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