Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.
Interpretation
Insecurity can distort perceptions and undermine trust between people.
Graham Greene's quote highlights how insecurity can lead to misunderstandings and erode the foundation of trust in relationships. In a tense environment, where individuals are constantly on guard, their fears and doubts can turn even loyal allies into perceived threats, ultimately harming interpersonal connections and communication.
In practice
This quote can be used in a seminar on trust-building in personal and professional relationships.
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.
Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.
Going back after a long time will make you made, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.
We cannot live without the knowledge that someone cares about us.
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
I verily believe that her not remembering and not minding in the least, made me cry again, inwardly - and that is the sharpest crying of all.
An argument would have begun to steam and boil and sputter - and you know how arguments end. Even if I had convinced him that he was wrong, his pride would have made it difficult for him to back down and give in.
An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.
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