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1471635
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This was hell then; it wasn't anything to worry about: it was just his own familiar room.
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Graham Greene |
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d1e3632
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Suddenly I realized she was asleep. Exhausted by her flight she had fallen asleep against my shoulder as so many times, in taxis, in buses, on a park-seat. I sat still and let her be. There was nothing to disturb her in the dark church. The candles napped around the virgin, and there was nobody else there. The slowly growing pain in my upper arm where her weight lay was the greatest pleasure I had ever known.
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Graham Greene |
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326cfe4
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For God's sake stop making people in your image. Harry was real. He wasn't just your hero and my lover. He was Harry. He was in a racket. He did bad things. What about it? He was the man we knew.
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Graham Greene |
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71a1c28
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It's a good world if you don't weaken.
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Graham Greene |
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37b9955
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It was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization - it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.
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Graham Greene |
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983e2e7
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A single feat of daring can alter the whole conception of what is possible.
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Graham Greene |
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e005813
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Why doesn't hatred kill desire? I would have given anything to sleep. I would have behaved like a schoolboy if I had believed in the possibility of a substitute. But there was a time when I had tried to find a substitute, and it hadn't worked.
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love
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Graham Greene |
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19993cd
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One can't reason away regret-it's a bit like falling in love, falling into regret.
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Graham Greene |
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6e71f63
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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...
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Graham Greene |
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d737ad4
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A man becomes trustworthy when you trust him.
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trustworthy
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Graham Greene |
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43ed380
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When I began to realize how often we quarrelled, how often I picked on her with nervous irritation, I became aware that our love was doomed: love had turned into a love-affair with a beginning and an end.
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Graham Greene |
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9c667c8
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You don't bless what you love...It's when you want to love and you can't manage it. You stretch out your hands and you say God forgive me that I can't love but bless this thing anyway...We have to bless what we hate...It would be better to love, but that's not always possible.
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hate
blessing
the-blessing
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Graham Greene |
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9a4ddd7
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Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.
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Graham Greene |
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50db024
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Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.
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Graham Greene |
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4994d1a
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She was not too young to be wise, but she was too young to know that wisdom shouldn't be spoken aloud when you are happy.
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youth
wisdom
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Graham Greene |
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210a9a1
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He opened the book at random, or so he believed, but a book is like a sandy path which keeps the indent of footsteps.
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intent
divination
purpose
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Graham Greene |
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1fc657e
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It's strange how the human mind swings back and forth, from one extreme to another. Does truth lie at some point of the pendulum's swing, at a point where it never rests, not in the dull perpendicular mean where it dangles in the end like a windless flag, but at an angle, nearer one extreme than another? If only a miracle could stop the pendulum at an angle of sixty degrees, one would believe the truth was there.
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Graham Greene |
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fd5f20d
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It is the same in life: sometimes it is more difficult to make a scene than to die.
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Graham Greene |
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ae3224f
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When I tried to remember her voice saying, 'Don't worry,' I found I had no memory for sounds. I couldn't imitate her voice. I couldn't even caricature it: when I tried to remember it, it was anonymous - just any woman's voice. The process of forgetting her had set in. We should keep gramophone records as we keep photographs.
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Graham Greene |
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a116093
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She had always called me 'you.' 'Is that you?' on the telephone, 'Can you? Will you? Do you?' so that I imagined, like a fool, for a few minutes at a time, there was only one 'you' in the world and that was me.
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Graham Greene |
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6ca1641
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They haven't left us much to believe in, have they?--even disbelief. I can't believe in anything bigger than a home or vaguer than a human being.
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life
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Graham Greene |
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1f661cc
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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.
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Graham Greene |
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6ba742b
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It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes.
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Graham Greene |
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a1ba957
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If ash-trays could speak, sir.' 'Indeed, yes.
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Graham Greene |
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a579085
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People change,' she said 'Oh, no they don't. Look at me. I've never changed. It's like those sticks of rock: bite it all the way down, you'll still read Brighton. That's human nature.
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Graham Greene |
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fce4a28
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They think my mother's ashes are marijuana.
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Graham Greene |
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811c9f1
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I have never planned anything illegal in my life,' Aunt Augusta said. 'How could I plan anything of the kind when I have never read any of the laws and have no idea what they are?
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Graham Greene |
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a85a5fd
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So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days.
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Graham Greene |
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8512624
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The Church is in the world, it is part of the suffering in the world, and though Christ condemned the disciple who struck off the ear of the high priest's servant, our hearts go out in sympathy to all who are moved to violence by the suffering of others. The Church condemns violence, but it condemns indifference more harshly. Violence can be the expression of love, indifference never. One is an imperfection of charity, the other the perfect..
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Graham Greene |
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caf5908
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I had never known her before and I had never loved her so much. The more we know the more we love, I thought.
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Graham Greene |
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647da34
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He was like a child with haemophilia: every contact drew blood.
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Graham Greene |
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2ae804f
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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.
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religion
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Graham Greene |
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a9a30a9
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One forgets so quickly one's own youth...
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Graham Greene |
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f937b6e
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When I replied that I loved her too in that way, I was the liar, not she, for I never lose the consciousness of time: to me the present is never here: it is always last year or next week.
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Graham Greene |
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6f2d594
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I have no need to write to you or talk to you, you know everything before I can speak, but when one loves, one feels the need to use the same old ways one has always used. I know I am only beginning to love, but already I want to abandon everything, everybody but you: only fear and habit prevent me.
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Graham Greene |
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6a89c28
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In a crisis perhaps it is old cliches one clings to, like a child to a parent.
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Graham Greene |
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506dbd4
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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?
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Graham Greene |
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752a08f
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There are times when a lover longs to be also a father and a brother: he is jealous of the years he hasn't shared.
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Graham Greene |
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c97dd3b
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People don't demand that a thing be reasonable if their emotions are touched. Lovers aren't reasonable, are they?
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love
reasonable
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Graham Greene |
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c6a6d5a
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As long as nothing happens anything is possible...
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Graham Greene |
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9f2e427
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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.
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Graham Greene |
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3f6f9f4
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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.
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misery
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Graham Greene |
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defdfda
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You were there teaching me to squander, so that one day we might have nothing left except this love of You. But You are too good to me. When I ask You for Pain, You give me peace. Give it him too. Give him my peace-he needs it more.
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Graham Greene |
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40da3f9
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If you live in a place for long you cease to read about it.
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Graham Greene |