Graham Greene Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself. In love we are incapable of honor - the courageous act is no more than playing a part to an audience of two.

  Graham Greene

  Love Is, Two, Honor

  Graham Greene (1973). “The Collected Edition: The quiet American”

  18 Copy quote

• 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.

  Graham Greene

  Pain, Book, Thinking

  Graham Greene (1980). “Travels with my aunt”

  7 Copy quote

• Unhappiness in a child accumulates because he sees no end to the dark tunnel. The thirteen weeks of a term might just as well be thirteen years.

  Graham Greene

  Children, Dark, Tunnels

  13 Copy quote

• 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?

  Graham Greene

  Night, Thinking, Luxury

  Graham Greene (1992). “The Quiet American”

  12 Copy quote

• The economy of a novelist is a little like that of a careful housewife who is unwilling to throw away anything that might perhaps serve its turn.

  Graham Greene

  Writing, Novelists, Literature

  Graham Greene (1994). “In Search of a Character: Two African Journals”, Penguin USA

  11 Copy quote

• Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.

  Graham Greene

  Success, Congratulations, Break

  Graham Greene (2011). “Ways Of Escape”, p.252, Random House

  29 Copy quote

• It is one of the strange discoveries a man can make that life, however you lead it, contains moments of exhilaration; there are always comparisons which can be made with worse times: even in danger and misery the pendulum swings.

  Graham Greene

  Men, Discovery, Swings

  Graham Greene (1971). “The Power and the Glory”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

  21 Copy quote

• Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

  Graham Greene

  Dumb, Would Be, Literature

  'The Quiet American' (1955) pt. 1, ch. 3

  60 Copy quote

• I hate you, God. I hate you as though you actually exist.

  Graham Greene

  Hate, I Hate You, Hate You

  12 Copy quote

• In our hearts there is a ruthless dictator, ready to contemplate the misery of a thousand strangers if it will ensure the happiness of the few we love.

  Graham Greene

  Heart, Misery, Dictator

  Graham Greene (1960). “The Heart of The Matter”

  8 Copy quote

• Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil - or else an absolute ignorance.

  Graham Greene

  Happiness, Ignorance, Men

  Graham Greene (1960). “The Heart of The Matter”

  15 Copy quote

• We are all of us resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to.

  Graham Greene

  Death, Near Death, Resigned

  Graham Greene (1951). “The heart of the matter”

  7 Copy quote

• Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

  Graham Greene

  Dumb, Literature, World

  'The Quiet American' (1955) pt. 1, ch. 3

  57 Copy quote

• It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death: I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck.

  Graham Greene

  Eye, Our Love, Bleeding

  Graham Greene (1951). “The End of the Affair”, London Heinemann [1951]

  4 Copy quote

• For an artist to think in terms of success is like a priest trying to think in terms of success.

  Graham Greene

  Success, Thinking, Artist

  10 Copy quote

• So long as one is happy one can endure any discipline: it was unhappiness that broke down the habits of work.

  Graham Greene

  Discipline, Long, Unhappiness

  Graham Greene (1974). “The end of the affair”, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• All good novelists have bad memories.

  Graham Greene

  Memories, Novelists, Bad Memories

  5 Copy quote

• One never knows enough about characters in real life to put them into novels. One gets started and then, suddenly, one can not remember what toothpaste they use; what are their views on interior decoration, and one is stuck utterly. No, major characters emerge; minor ones may be photographed.

  Graham Greene

  Real, Character, Writing

  Graham Greene, Henry J. Donaghy (1992). “Conversations with Graham Greene”, p.42, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  15 Copy quote

• I had very good dentures once. Some magnificent gold work. It's the only form of jewelry a man can wear that women fully appreciate.

  Graham Greene

  Men, Dental Work, Appreciate

  Graham Greene (1980). “Travels with my aunt”

  7 Copy quote

• Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?

  Graham Greene

  Country, Patriotism, World

  Graham Greene (1973). “The Portable Graham Greene”

  6 Copy quote

• I had never known her before and I had never loved her so much. The more we know the more we love, I thought.

  Graham Greene

  Knows, Known

  Graham Greene (1974). “The end of the affair”, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• You cannot control what you love--you watch it driving recklessly towards the broken bridge, the torn-up track, the horror of seventy years ahead.

  Graham Greene

  Love You, Years, Bridges

  Graham Greene (1971). “The Power and the Glory”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Graham Greene

  Pain, Memories, Men

  Graham Greene (1970). “The Collected Edition: Our man in Havana”

  4 Copy quote

• If two people loved, they slept together; it was a mathematical formula, tested and proved by human experience.

  Graham Greene

  Two, People, Together

  Graham Greene (1974). “The end of the affair”, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• We can love with our minds, but can we love only with our minds? Love extends itself all the time, so that we can love even with our senseless nails: we love even with our clothes, so that a sleeve can feel a sleeve.

  Graham Greene

  Mind Love, Clothes, Nails

  Graham Greene (1974). “The end of the affair”, Vintage

  13 Copy quote

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