Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.
Graham GreeneRead
Any man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that people's desires often stem from a search for deeper meaning or fulfillment in life.
Graham Greene's quote implies that the act of seeking pleasure or comfort, as represented by knocking on the door of a brothel, is driven by a deeper yearning for spiritual connection or understanding, often referred to as the search for God. It reflects the complexity of human motivations, where physical desires can mask a profound quest for meaning and belonging, highlighting the interplay between earthly pursuits and spiritual aspirations.
In practice
This quote can be used in a lecture discussing the philosophical aspects of human desires.
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.
For people raised and programmed on the patriarchal religions of today, religions that affect even the most secular aspects of our society, perhaps there remains a lingering, almost innate memory of sacred shrines and temples tended by priestesses who served in the religion of the original supreme deity. In the beginning, people prayed to the Creatress of Life, the Mistress of Heaven. At the very dawn of religion, God was a woman. Do you remember?
Thus Carol hit upon the tragedy of old age, which is not that it is less vigorous than youth, but that it is not needed by youth.
It's a curious thing in American life that the most abject nonsense will be excused if the utterer can claim the sanction of religion. A country which forbids an established church by law is prey to any denomination. The best that can be said is that this is pluralism of a kind.
I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups rather than to make men happy.
Those who have failed to work toward the truth have missed the purpose of living.
I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.
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