1
He had in those days imagined himself capable of extraordinary heroisms and endurances which would make the girl he loved forget the awkward hands and the spotty chin of adolescence. Everything had seemed possible. One could laugh at daydreams, but so long as you had the capacity to daydream there was a chance that you might develop some of the qualities of which you dreamed. It was like the religious discipline: words however emptily repeated can in time form a habit, a kind of unnoticed sediment at the bottom of the mind, until one day to your own surprise you find yourself acting on the belief you thought you didn't believe in. .Graham Greene
2
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.Graham Greene
3
But it is impossible to go through life without trust; that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.Graham Greene
4
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.Graham Greene
5
There's nothing so heavy as books, sir--unless it's bricks.Graham Greene
6
There are dreams which belong only partly in the unconscious; these are the dreams we remember on waking so vividly that we deliberately continue them, and so fall asleep again and wake and sleep and the dream goes on without interruption, with a thread of logic the pure dream doesn't possess.Graham Greene
7
In five hundred years' time, to the historian writing the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, this little episode would not exist. There will be plenty of other causes. You and me and poor Jones will not even figure in a footnote. It will be all economics, politics, battles.Graham Greene
8
We forget very easily what gives us pain.Graham Greene
9
It is the same in life: sometimes it is more difficult to make a scene than to die.Graham Greene
10
He had been frightened and so he had been vehement.Graham Greene
11
A police photograph is like a passport photograph: the intelligence which casts a veil over the crude common shape is never recorded by the cheap lens. No one can deny the contours of the flesh, the shape of nose and mouth, and yet we protest, This isn't me.Graham Greene
12
He had stylized himself--life was easier that way. He had chosen a physical mould just as writer chooses a technical form.Graham Greene
13
One can't love humanity. One can only love people.Graham Greene
14
Pity is cruel. Pity destroys.Graham Greene
15
It is always of interest to know what strikes another human being as remarkable.Graham Greene
16
The old man in the beard he felt convinced was wrong. He was too busy saving his own soul. Wasn't 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?Graham Greene