70+ Graham Greene Quotes | Minimalist Quotes

In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!
GRAHAM GREENE

Brother Democracy Love Peace Production
Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time, and sometimes it seemed to me that her abandonment touched that strange mathematical point of endlessness, a point with no width, occupying no space.
GRAHAM GREENE

Absence Forever Mathematics Occupy Space Time
Hate is a lack of imagination.
GRAHAM GREENE

Hate Imagination One Liner
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

Avoid Beautiful Discover Face Happiness Love Tears Togetherness Ugly
Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?
GRAHAM GREENE

Country Love Loyalty World
We forget very easily what gives us pain.
GRAHAM GREENE

Easy Forget Pain
He was impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance.
GRAHAM GREENE

Goodness Himself Ignorance Intention
The next best thing to talking to her is talking about her.
GRAHAM GREENE

Love Relationship Talk
For an artist to think in terms of success is like a priest trying to think in terms of success.
GRAHAM GREENE

Artist Success Thinking
Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and simple, however cruel; our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt.
GRAHAM GREENE

Corruption Enemy Ignorance Simplicity Worst
I can’t talk you in terms of time –your time and my time are different
GRAHAM GREENE

Different Myself Talk Time
I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can’t love and do nothing.
GRAHAM GREENE

Hands Love Myself Taste Touch
We never get accustomed to being less important to other people than they are to us.
GRAHAM GREENE

Important People Value Worth
To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself. In love we are incapable of honor – the courageous act is no more than playing a part to an audience of two.
GRAHAM GREENE

Act Audience Courage Image Love Respect
I aim to be content with what I produce. It’s an aim I never achieve, but I go over my work word by word, time and again, so as to be as little dissatisfied as possible.
GRAHAM GREENE

Achievement Content Goal Myself Possible Production Satisfaction Time Work
Innocence is a kind of insanity.
GRAHAM GREENE

Innocence Kind One Liner Sanity
Most things disappoint till you look deeper.
GRAHAM GREENE

Appearance Deep Disappoint
Human nature is not black and white but black and grey.
GRAHAM GREENE

Black Human Nature
Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector.
GRAHAM GREENE

Better Lying Seek Truth
People who like quotes love meaningless generalizations.
GRAHAM GREENE

Generalization Love Meaning People Quote
One has no talent. I have no talent. It’s just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time.
GRAHAM GREENE

Question Talent Time Willing Work
As long as nothing happens anything is possible.
GRAHAM GREENE

One Liner Possible
The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You’re there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see – every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.
GRAHAM GREENE

Boredom Greatness Party People Word Writing
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

Cold Diamond Heart Oneself Precious Value Warmth
All good novelists have bad memories. What you remember comes out as journalism; what you forget goes into the compost of the imagination.
GRAHAM GREENE

Bad Forget Goodness Imagination Journalism Memories Yourself
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.
GRAHAM GREENE

Distance Fiction Journalism Novel Reason Truth Try Writing
Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism.
GRAHAM GREENE

Bad Journalism Media Word

Graham Greene Quotes

Famous English writers