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Graham Greene

Graham Greene Quotes

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Famous Graham Greene Quotes

“Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.”

IfsMenTruthLyingChallengesTechnologyDrinkTruth IsWineDrinkingSeekingAlcoholRecklessLiquorChampagneCocktailsDrinking AlcoholFunny DrinkingFunny AlcoholAlcohol DrinkingDrinking FunnyDrinking WineBest WineDrinking ChampagneLiquor FunnyCocktail DrinksWine And AgeChampagne DrinkingDrinking Age
Book:Travels With My Aunt
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“If only it were possible to love without injury – fidelity isn’t enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation. In a way I was glad that my wife had struck out at me again – I had forgotten her pain for too long, and this was the only kind of recompense I could give her. Unfortunately the innocent are always involved in any conflict. Always, everywhere, there is some voice crying from a tower.”

IfsWayGivingMindKindPersonsLongEnoughPhilosophyBodyPainVoiceHurtWifeCryPrideInvolvedConflictGuiltForgottenPossessionMy WifeGladInnocentFaithfulInjuryPossessedTowersHumiliationMind And BodyInjuredFidelityRecompense
Book:The Collected Edition: The quiet American
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“One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand. Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is because we have been conditioned by what we have read, and if I had never known love at all, perhaps it was because my father's library had not contained the right books.”

IfsThinkingHumansHas BeensBookSometimesHandsPainLife IsFallFatherChanceHuman BeingsKnownFalling In LoveLibrarySecond HandLove And Pain
Book:Travels With My Aunt
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“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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“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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“Oh, she doesn't belong to anybody now,' he said, and suddenly I saw her for what she was - a piece of refuse waiting to be cleared away: if you needed a bit of hair you could take it, or trim her nails if nail trimmings had value to you. Like a saint's her bones could be divided up - if anybody required them. She was going to be burnt soon, so why shouldn't everybody have what he wanted first? What a fool I had been during three years to imagine that in any way I had possessed her. We are all possessed by nobody, not even by ourselves.”

IfsWayYearsFirstsSaidWantedValuesThreeBitsWaitingSawsPiecesImagineHairFoolNeededSaintRefuseBonesDividedThree YearsPossessedImagine ThatNailsTrimming
Book:The End of the Affair
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“God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us - God's love.”

IfsMenFeelsLooksHeartSaidEnoughMightWould BeRunningHateFeltWaterDarkFireWalkingTasteGlassesMilesGravesLike MeDesertGet AwayPriestsPotScareSmallestGod's LoveGod Is LovePintsWalking In The Dark
Author:Graham Greene
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“It's strange how the human mind swings back and forth, from one extreme to another. Does truth lie at some point of the pendulum's swing, at a point where it never rests, not in the dull perpendicular mean where it dangles in the end like a windless flag, but at an angle, nearer one extreme than another? If only a miracle could stop the pendulum at an angle of sixty degrees, one would believe the truth was there.”

IfsMindBelieveHumansMeanDoeEndsLyingStrangeDegreesMiracleExtremesDullHuman MindFlagsSwingsSixtyAngleBack And ForthPendulums
Author:Graham Greene
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