Graham Greene Quotes - Page 2

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.

Nothing in life was as ugly as death.

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

You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.

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.

I have never understood why people who can swallow the enormous improbability of a personal God boggle at a personal Devil.

You are all alike, you people. You never learn the truth-that God knows nothing.

Beware of formulas. If there's a God, he's not a God of formulas.

Hope was an instinct only the reasoning human mind could kill. An animal never knew despair.

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?

disappointment had to be postponed, hope kept alive as long as possible;

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.

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.

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.

Heresy is another word for freedom of thought.

But it is impossible to go through life without trust; that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

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.

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.

There was a tacit understanding between them that 'liquor helped'; growing more miserable with every glass one hoped for the moment of relief.

I doubt if ever one ceases to love, but one can cease to be in love as easily as one can outgrow an author one admired as a boy.