“Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“It was like having a box of chocolates shut in the bedroom drawer. Until the box was empty it occupied the mind too much.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“Friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“We'd forgive most things if we knew the facts.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“There was a tacit understanding between them that 'liquor helped'; growing more miserable with every glass one hoped for the moment of relief.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“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, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“Except for the sound of the rain, on the road, on the roofs, on the umbrella, there was absolute silence: only the dying moan of the sirens continued for a moment or two to vibrate within the ear. It seemed to Scobie later that this was the ultimate border he had reached in happiness: being in darkness, alone, with the rain falling, without love or pity.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“A single feat of daring can alter the whole conception of what is possible.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“When he was young, he had thought love had something to do with understanding, but with age he knew that no human being understood another. Love was the wish to understand, and presently with constant failure the wish died, and love died too perhaps or changed into this painful affection, loyalty, pity…”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“People talk about the courage of condemned men walking to the place of execution: sometimes it needs as much courage to walk with any kind of bearing towards another person's habitual misery.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“They had been corrupted by money, and he had been corrupted by sentiment. Sentiment was the more dangerous, because you couldn’t name its price. A man open to bribes was to be relied upon below a certain figure, but sentiment might uncoil in the heart at a name, a photograph, even a smell remembered.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“Beauty is like success: we can't love it for long.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“...every monologue sooner or later becomes a discussion.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“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?”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“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.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“He felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness - the sense that is where we really belong.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“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.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“Nobody here could ever talk about a heaven on earth. Heaven remained rigidly in its proper place on the other side of death, and on this side flourished the injustices, the cruelties, the meanness that elsewhere people so cleverly hushed up. Here you could love human beings nearly as God loved them, knowing the worst: you didn’t love a pose, a pretty dress, a sentiment artfully assumed.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“If one knew, he wondered, the facts,
would one have to pity even the planets? If one reached what they called the heart of the matter?”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“What I've done is far worse than murder - that's an act, a blow, a stab, a shot: it's over and done, but I'm carrying my corruption around with me. It's the coating of my stomach.' He threw her wrists aside like seeds towards the stony floor. 'Never pretend I haven't shown my love.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“It seemed after all that one never really missed a thing. To be a human being one had to drink the cup. If one were lucky on one day, or cowardly on another, it was presented on a third occasion.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“All right. All right.' He thought: am I taking to drink too? It seemed to him that he had no shape left, nothing you could touch and say: this is Scobie.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“What are others worth that they have the nerve to sneer at any human being?”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
“It's not really much good tearing out a page because you can see the place where it's been torn. [...] You can pull a stamp out,' she said with terrible youthful clarity, 'and you don't know that it's ever been there.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Heart of the Matter
Graham Greene
Born place: in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, The United Kingdom
Born date October 2, 1904
See more on GoodReads
“Our arrogance
causes us to imagine special value in this temporary collection
of molecules. Why do we perceive more spiritual value
in the sum of our body parts than on any individual cell in
our body? Why don’t we hold funerals when skin cells die?”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment
“Thinking you might be crazy can drive you crazy.”
― Karl Marlantes, quote from What It is Like to Go to War
“الشرفاء يسهل خداعهم، حتى إذا اكتشفوا أنهم خُدعوا، اعتصموا بنوع من الاحتقار المتكبر، بدلاً من أن يلجأوا إلى القانون، إذا كان ذلك فى الإمكان.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Insulted and Humiliated
“You got used to running things on your own."
"What could he do about it when he's in Iraq and the car breaks down in Kansas?"
Beckett gave her a long, quiet look. "I'm not in Iraq."
"No, and it has to be said, I'm not in Kansas anymore." She lifted her hands, then let them fall. "It's not that I've forgotten how to be a couple, but that my experience in being part of one is different from yours. Maybe from most people's. And I've been on my own a long time."
"Now you're not. I'm not fighting a war, and I'm right here." Needed to be here, he realized, with her.”
― Nora Roberts, quote from The Next Always
“Yes, even in your mouse moods you only play with the idea of not being." She cleared her throat again. "Biology, you see. It’s because of biology that we want to live and not to die. And it is because of biology that we come to a time when we want to die and not to live.”
― Aidan Chambers, quote from Postcards from No Man's Land
The Five Things We C...
The Three Pillars of...
Masked by Moonlight
The Effects of Child...
SnakecharmBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
