Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.
Graham GreeneRead
I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the possibility of love dying.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects a skepticism towards religious belief and explores the contrast between the certainty of death and the perceived fragility of love.
Graham Greene expresses a deep ambivalence toward religion and faith, suggesting that belief in God may serve as a comforting illusion for some, providing courage in the face of life's uncertainties. However, he posits that the certainty of death is a more tangible reality, and in this acceptance, one finds a paradoxical freedom where love's impermanence becomes less daunting, as it is ultimately bound to the inevitability of mortality.
Themes
FaithDeathLoveCourageS Skepticism
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a philosophical discussion about the meaning of life.
More from Graham Greene
All quotes →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 GreeneRead
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.
Graham GreeneRead
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 GreeneRead
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.
Graham GreeneRead
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.
Graham GreeneRead
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