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The truth has never been of any real value to any human being - it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

Graham Greene

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Graham Greene
Age: 86 †
Born: 1904
Born: October 2
Died: 1991
Died: April 3
Autobiographer
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Berkhamsted
Hertfordshire
Henry Graham Greene
Lying
Pursue
Mathematicians
Values
Honesty
Philosophers
Truth
Relation
Mathematician
Human
Kindness
Symbol
Humans
Lies
Relations
Real
Value
Truths
Never
Worth
Symbols
Thousand
Philosopher

More quotes by Graham Greene

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It is always of interest to know what strikes another human being as remarkable.
Graham Greene
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Time has its revenges, but revenge seems so often sour. Wouldn’t we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife with a husband, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that’s why men have invented God – a being capable of understanding.
Graham Greene
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Who knows whether there may not be a moment in childhood when the world changes forever, like making a face when the clock strikes?
Graham Greene
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In the taxi I let my hand lie on her leg like a promise, but I had no intention of keeping my promise.
Graham Greene
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In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!
Graham Greene
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All good novelists have bad memories.
Graham Greene
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Like some wines our love could neither mature nor travel.
Graham Greene
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Men can become twins with age. The past was their common womb the six months of rain and the six months of sun was the period of their common gestation. They needed only a few words and a few gestures to convey their meaning. They had graduated through the same fevers, they were moved by the same love and contempt.
Graham Greene
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For a good man fame is always a problem.
Graham Greene
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He had stylized himself--life was easier that way. He had chosen a physical mould just as writer chooses a technical form.
Graham Greene
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I'm only saying I want you to be happy. I hate your being unhappy. I don't mind anything you do that makes you happy. You just want an excuse. If I sleep with anybody else, you feel you can do the same - any time. That's neither here nor there. I want you to be happy, that's all. You'd make my bed for me? Perhaps.
Graham Greene
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The subject of a novel is not the plot. Who remembers what happened to Lucien de Rebempre in the end?
Graham Greene
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...every monologue sooner or later becomes a discussion.
Graham Greene
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I can't talk you in terms of time --your time and my time are different
Graham Greene
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One never knows enough about characters in real life to put them into novels. One gets started and then, suddenly, one can not remember what toothpaste they use what are their views on interior decoration, and one is stuck utterly. No, major characters emerge minor ones may be photographed.
Graham Greene
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He was impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance.
Graham Greene
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Self-expression is a hard and selfish thing. It eats everything, even the self. At the end you find you haven't even got a self to express.
Graham Greene
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I had never known her before and I had never loved her so much. The more we know the more we love, I thought.
Graham Greene
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A solitary laugh is often a laugh of superiority.
Graham Greene
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Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't, why should we? They talk about people and the proletariat I talk about the suckers and the mugs. It's the same thing.
Graham Greene