Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.
Graham GreeneRead
So long as one is happy one can endure any discipline: it was unhappiness that broke down the habits of work.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Happiness can provide the strength to endure difficult tasks, while unhappiness leads to a breakdown in discipline.
In this quote, Graham Greene emphasizes the importance of happiness as a driving force behind perseverance and discipline. He suggests that when individuals are happy, they can face and endure challenges and responsibilities with greater ease, but when they are unhappy, it leads to a loss of motivation and commitment to their work or habits.
Themes
HappinessDisciplineWorkMotivationPerseverance
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about resilience and perseverance in the workplace.
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
Similar quotes
Happiness is a small house, with a big kitchen.
Alfred HitchcockRead
Meal isn't over when I'm full. Meal's over when I hate myself.
Patton OswaltRead
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.
Marcus AureliusRead
This is my creed: Happiness is the only good; reason the only torch; justice the only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest.
Robert Green IngersollRead
I've spent most of my life trying to think my way to happiness, and my failure to achieve that goal only proves, in my mind, that I am not a good enough thinker. It never occurred to me that the source of my unhappiness is not flawed thinking but thinking itself.
Eric WeinerRead
This idea of perpetual happiness is crazy and overrated, because those dark moments fuel you for the next bright moments; each one helps you appreciate the other.
Brad PittRead