Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.
Graham GreeneRead
Christmas it seems to me is a necessary festival; we require a season when we can regret all the flaws in our human relationships: it is the feast of failure, sad but consoling.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Christmas serves as a time for reflection on our human relationships, acknowledging our failures but also finding comfort in them.
In this quote, Graham Greene expresses the idea that Christmas is more than just a celebration; it is an essential time for introspection and acknowledgment of the imperfect nature of our relationships. While the season may bring feelings of regret regarding our emotional connections and failures with others, it also has a consolatory effect, allowing us to find solace in our shared human experiences and the understanding that we all struggle with relationships.
Themes
ChristmasRelationshipsFailureIntrospectionConsolationHuman Connections
In practice
Example use cases
During a holiday gathering, one might share this quote to highlight the importance of reflecting on relationships over the festive season.
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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