Truth Quote by Graham Greene — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“Always I find when I begin to write there is one character who obstinately will not come alive. There is nothing psychologically false about him, but he sticks, he has to be pushed around, words have to be found for him, all the technical skill I have acquired through laborious years has to be employed in making him appear alive to my readers { } He never does the unexpected thing, he never surprises me, he never takes charge. Every other character helps. He only hinders [ ].”

“The truth, he thought, 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.”

“Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation.”

“I suppose in all lives a moment comes when we wonder--suppose after all there is a God, suppose the theologians are right.”

“Life would go out in a 'fraction of a second' (that was the phrase), but all night he had been realizing that time depends on clocks and the passage of light. There were no clocks and the light wouldn't change. Nobody really knew how long a second of pain could be. It might last a whole purgatory--or for ever.”

“If you're not gonna tell the truth, then why start talking?”

“Sometimes, to protect a secret we will say it so openly that most will not suspect the truth of what we are saying.”

“Much of what was said did not matter, and that much of what mattered could not be said.”

“Nothing is easier than self-deceit.”

“There was a way in which my grandmother's true self was not these guests' business; no one's true self was the business of more than a very small number of family members or close friends.”

“In what you say of another, apply the test of kindness, necessity and truth, and let nothing pass your lips without a 2/3 majority.”