Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.
Graham GreeneRead
There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.
Interpretation
Childhood is a pivotal time when significant opportunities for the future arise.
This quote by Graham Greene suggests that during childhood, there exists a critical moment that serves as a gateway to future possibilities. It highlights the importance of these defining experiences, indicating that the way we engage with such opportunities in our early years can shape the trajectory of our lives.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of childhood experiences.
Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.
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?
God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us - God's love.
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.
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
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.
These memories sustained him, but not so easily. Too often they reminded him of where he was when he last summoned them. They lay on the far side of a great divide in time, as significant as B.C. and A.D. Before prison, before the war, before the sight of a corpse became a banality.
The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not "get over" the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.
Life is not just something to be endured. It is to be lived in joy, in a fullness without limit (p.82)
They say that these are not the best of times, but they're the only times I've ever known.
Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.
I'm lucky. Usually you're dead to get your own museum, but I'm still alive to see mine.
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