Quotes by Graham Greene

Pity is cruel. Pity destroys.

It is always of interest to know what strikes another human being as remarkable.

The old man in the beard he felt convinced was wrong. He was too busy saving his own soul. Wasnt it better to take part even in the crimes of people you loved, if it was necessary hate as they did, and if that were the end of everything suffer damnation with them rather than be saved alone?

When we are not sure we are alive.

Hatred seems to operate on the same glands as love it even produces the same actions. If we had not been taught how to interpret the story of the Passion would we have been able to say from their actions alone whether it was the jealous Judas or the cowardly Peter who loved Christ?

Communists have committed great crimes but at least they have not stood aside like an established society and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate.

At the end of what is called the sexual life the only love which has lasted is the love which has everything every disappointment every failure and every betrayal which has accepted even the sad fact that in the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship.

Despair is the price one pays for setting himself an impossible aim.

No human being can really understand another and no one can arrange anothers happiness.

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

Failure too is a form of death.

Human nature is not black and white but black and grey.

We are all of us resigned to death: its life we arent resigned to.

Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.

No human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange anothers happiness.

The truth has never been of any real value to any human being - it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

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.

A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.

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 mask?

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