Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.
Graham GreeneRead
Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Success can lead to greater challenges and expectations than failure, affecting many aspects of life.
Graham Greene's quote emphasizes that while failure is often viewed negatively, success carries its own risks and pressures. The metaphor of ripples breaking over a wider coastline suggests that when one achieves success, its effects can spread broadly, bringing new challenges, scrutiny, and responsibilities that can be more daunting than the lessons learned from failure.
Themes
SuccessFailureChallengesPressureExpectations
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming obstacles, one might say, 'Remember, success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.'
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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