Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.
Graham GreeneRead
Friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something.
Interpretation
Friendship is a deep emotional connection that doesn't rely on reciprocity or material exchange.
In this quote, Graham Greene emphasizes that true friendship goes beyond mere transactional interactions and is rooted in the emotional and spiritual realm. It highlights the intrinsic value of friendship, suggesting that it is a profound feeling that resides within the soul and should not be viewed as a trade or obligation.
In practice
During a toast at a wedding, one might quote Greene to highlight the importance of emotional bonds in friendships.
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.
If I do not give a friend "The benefit of the doubt," but put the worst construction instead of the best on what is said or done, then I know nothing of Calvary love.
I pass by people, grazing them on the edges, and it bothers me. I've got to admire someone to really like them deeply - to value them as friends.
Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.
In our friendships we have to be wise that we choose godly people to be our friends. Somebody might say, well does that mean that you should never have a lost person as your friend? No, I wouldn't say that. But you can't have the same intimacy with a lost person that you can with a godly person in whom the Holy Spirit is living.
Martin is your best friend, isn't he?' a sweet and well-intentioned girl once said when both of us were present: it was the only time I ever felt awkward about this precious idea, which seemed somehow to risk diminishment if it were uttered aloud.
Friends are the siblings God never gave us.
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