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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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“However great a man's fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance - so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamor to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature.”

ThinkingMenMomentsLastsLawDiesChanceClearGreaterHeardSurvivalMathematicsRemainsSuicideExcuseMiserableCourageousJudgedOddsMathematicianSuicidalClamorFears Of Life
Author:Graham Greene
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“With a novel, which takes perhaps years to write, the author is not the same man he was at the end of the book as he was at the beginning. It is not only that his characters have developed-he has developed with them, and this nearly always gives a sense of roughness to the work: a novel can seldom have the sense of perfection which you find in Chekhov's story, The Lady with the Dog.”

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Book:Collected Stories
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“Men can become twins with age. The past was their common womb; the six months of rain and the six months of sun was the period of their common gestation. They needed only a few words and a few gestures to convey their meaning. They had graduated through the same fevers, they were moved by the same love and contempt.”

MenLoveAgePastCommonSunMonthsNeededPeriodsSixRainMovedContemptGesturesTwinsSix MonthsWombFeverFew WordsSame LoveGestation
Book:The Portable Graham Greene
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“Fun... human nature... does no one any harm... Regular as clockwork the old excuses came back into the alert, sad and dissatisfied brain--nothing ever matched the deep excitement of the regular desire. Men always failed you when it came to the act. She might just as well have been to the pictures.”

MenHumansWellsDoeHas BeensMightDesireFunBrainHuman NatureExcuseHarmExcitementDissatisfiedMatchedClockwork
Book:The Collected Edition: Brighton rock
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“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.”

MenHeartEvilSinPayPracticeKnowingImpossibleDespairCapacityAbsolutesAimOneselfSettingSettingsCarrieGoodwillHaving HopeDamnationFreezingHope And DespairEvil ManUnforgivableUnforgivable Sin
Book:The Portable Graham Greene
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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.”

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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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“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.”

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Book:The Power and the Glory
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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 seemed to Scobie that life was immeasurably long. Couldn’t the test of man have been carried out in fewer years? Couldn’t we have committed our first major sin at seven, have ruined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have clutched at redemption on a fifteen-year-old deathbed?”

MenYearsFirstsLongHas BeensHateSinTenMajorsTestsSevenCommittedRedemptionFewerFifteenRuinedDeathbedFifteen YearsLove Or HateFifteen Years Old
Book:The Heart of The Matter
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“He couldn't tell that this was one of those occasions a man never forgets: a small cicatrice had been made on the memory, a wound that would ache whenever certain things combined - the taste of gin at mid-day, the smell of flowers under a balcony, the clang of corrugated iron, an ugly bird flopping from perch to perch.”

MenMadeCertainMemoriesForgetFlowerTasteBirdUglySmellWoundsOccasionsIronNever ForgetAcheGinBalconiesFlopping
Book:Conversations with Graham Greene
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“They can print statistics and count the populations in hundreds of thousands, but to each man a city consists of no more than a few streets, a few houses, a few people. Remove those few and a city exists no longer except as a pain in the memory, like a pain of an amputated leg no longer there.”

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Book:The Collected Edition: Our man in Havana
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