717 Quotes by Graham Greene

I don't believe anyone who says love, love, love. It means self, self, self.

I don't care a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations...I don't think even my country means all that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren't there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?

She was not too young to be wise, but she was too young to know that wisdom shouldn't be spoken aloud when you are happy.

Hate is a lack of imagination.

I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing.

If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another name?

When you visualized a man or a woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity . . . that was a quality God's image carried with it . . . when you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.

He had opened the book at random several times, seeking a sortes Virgilianae, before he chose the sentences on which his code was to be based. 'You say: I am not free. But I have lifted my hand and let it fall.' It was as if in choosing that passage, he were transmitting a signal of defiance to both the services. The last word of the message, when it was decoded by Boris or another, would read 'goodbye.

She couldn't avoid being serious about things she cared for, and happiness made her grave at the thought of all the things which might destroy it.