Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.
Graham GreeneRead
Ordinary life goes on--that has saved many a man's reason.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The routine of daily life can provide stability and comfort to individuals, preserving their mental well-being.
This quote suggests that the mundane, ordinary aspects of life serve as a grounding force for many people, helping them maintain their sanity in the face of challenges or chaos. It implies that the consistency and normalcy of daily routines can often be a refuge for individuals, allowing them to cope with deeper existential issues and uncertainties.
Themes
OrdinaryLifeStabilityRoutineReason
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about coping with stress, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of routine.
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
Where is everybody? Humans could theoretically colonize the galaxy in a million years or so, and if they could, astronauts from older civilizations could do the same. So why haven't they come to Earth?
Enrico FermiRead
Want of imagination makes things unreal enough to be destroyed. By imagination I mean knowledge and love. I mean compassion. People of power kill children, the old send the young to die, because they have no imagination. They have power. Can you have power and imagination at the same time? Can you kill people you don’t know and have compassion for them at the same time?
Wendell BerryRead
We have seen when the earth had to be prepared for the habitation of man, a veil, as it were, of intermediate being was spread between him and its darkness, in which were joined in a subdued measure, the stability and insensibility of the earth, and the passion and perishing of mankind.
John RuskinRead
Seeing ourselves as others see us would probably confirm our worst suspicions about them.
Franklin P. AdamsRead
There is only one good. And that is to act according to the dictates of one's conscience.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.
William ShakespeareRead