Graham Greene citáty

page 4

„Umenie ženy je v tom, že si vyberie muža, ktorý si chce vybrať ju.“

„Iba Boh môže milovať ľudí tak, ako ich miluje, aj keď vie o nich to najhoršie.“

„Nenávisť je práve takým mocným putom ako láska, vyžaduje vernosť.“

„Smrť je asi ten najväčší odpočinok, čo človek môže mať.“

„Bezpečie môže človeku ísť na nervy rovnako ako nebezpečenstvo.“

„Je pozoruhodné, že o najdôležitejších veciach v živote ľudia tak málo premýšľajú.“

„Nebo, v ktorom sú ľudia iba šťastní, by bolo dosť nudné.“

„Väčšina ľudí sa najradšej vyspovedá z hriechov druhých ľudí.“

„Ľudia nemajú radi realitu a zdravý rozum, kým to na nich vek nenanúti.“

„Násilie môže byť výrazom lásky, ľahostajnosť nikdy.“

„Súcit je krutý. Je to živel, ktorý ničí. Láska nie je v bezpečí, ak je niekde nablízku súcit.“

„Človek je tvor, ktorému je určené žiť v katastrofách.“

„Počas detstva je celý svet starší než my.“

„Sú ženy, ktoré veria, že každá nespravodlivosť sa dá odčiniť dobrým jedlom.“

„Každá armáda prehlasuje svojich padlých za hrdinov podobne ako cirkev svojich mŕtvych za mučedníkov.“

„Nešťastie, rovnako ako súcit, sa môže stať zvykom.“

„Ak má človek zostať človekom, skôr či neskôr musí zaujať nejaké stanovisko.“

„Jedinou našou povinnosťou je robiť šťastnými tých, ktorých milujeme.“

„Minulosť je minulosť, a tu vedľa nej je budúcnosť.“

„Mladý potrebuje rozmanitosť, ale potrebuje ju aj muž, ktorý dosiahol určitý vek. U mladíka je to zvedavosť, ktorá vyplýva z neznalosti, u starého chuť, ktorú je potrebné osviežiť.“

„Nádej je inštinkt, ktorý môže zabiť iba ľudský zdravý rozum.“

„Náš život je kniha, ktorá sa píše sama.“

„Nevinnosť sa vždy nemo dovoláva ochrany vtedy, keď by sme boli omnoho múdrejší tým, že by sme sa proti nej bránili. Nevinnosť je ako nemý malomocný, ktorý stratil svoj zvonček, blúdi po svete a nechce nikomu ublížiť.“

„Nie je možné nič vysvetliť človeku, ktorý má v rukách moc.“

„Pochybovať je ľudské.“

„Princípy sú tu preto, aby boli porušované. Byť ľudský je tiež povinnosť.“

„Ten, kto hľadá útechu v nešťastí, nech si nepredstavuje žiadne veľké šťastie, ale ešte väčšie nešťastie.“

„V medziľudských vzťahoch láskavosť a klamstvá stoja za tisíc právd.“

„V detstve je vždy jeden okamih, keď sa otvoria dvere a vpustia dnu budúcnosť.“

„Vždy som mala rada tlstých mužov. Vzdali sa všetkého zbytočného úsilia, pretože si rozumne uvedomili, že sa ženy nezamilovávajú ako muži do telesnej schránky.“

„Zdráhal by som sa veriť v Boha, ktorého by som mohol pochopiť.“

„Väčšina vecí ťa sklame, ak sa nepozeráš hlbšie.“

„Nemôžete milovať bez intuície.“

„Boh ... vytvoril mnoho možností pre prípad, že by niektoré z jeho prototypov zlyhali - to je význam evolúcie.“

„Nevinnosť je druh šialenstva.“

„Bože, už si toho urobil dosť, o dosť si ma už okradol, som príliš unavený a starý na to, aby som sa naučil milovať, nechaj ma naveky sám.“

“I couldn't help wondering, is my husband so unattractive that no woman has ever wanted him? Except me, of course. I must have wanted him, in a way, once, but I've forgotten why, and I was too young to know what I was choosing.”

“One has no talent. I have no talent. It's just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time.”

“In a mad world it always seems simpler to obey.”

“A single feat of daring can alter the whole conception of what is possible.”

“When I replied that I loved her too in that way, I was the liar, not she, for I never lose the consciousness of time: to me the present is never here: it is always last year or next week.”

“The old lady knelt, saying her 'Hail Mary'; She didn't believe — but among Catholics even the sceptical are courteous.”

“It was not the kind of surroundings in which any one with free will — if such a man existed — would have chosen to await death.”

“The trouble is I don't believe my unbelief.”

“We mustn’t complain too much of being comedians—it’s an honourable profession. If only we could be good ones the world might gain at least a sense of style. We have failed—that’s all. We are bad comedians, we aren’t bad men.”

“Perhaps his laughter saved them — it must be difficult to shoot a laughing man: you have to feel important to kill.”

“You think it more difficult to turn air into wine than to turn wine into blood?”

“Sometimes I see myself reflected too closely in other men for comfort, and then I have an enormous wish to believe in the saints, in heroic virtue.”

“To me comfort is like the wrong memory at the wrong place or time: if one is lonely one prefers discomfort.”

“[After Hale's cremation] She came out of the crematorium, and there from the twin towers above her head fumed the very last of Fred, a thin stream of grey smoke from the ovens. Fred dropped indistinguishable grey ash on the pink blossoms: he became part of the smoke nuisance over London, and Ida wept.”

“Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.”

“I suppose the love of life which periodically deserts most men was returning: like sexual desire, it moves in cycles.”

“Its typical of Mexico, of the whole human race perhaps — violence in favour of an ideal and then the ideal lost but the violence just going on.”

“The hurt is in the act of possession; we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation. In a way I was glad my wife had struck out at me again – I had forgotten her pain for too long, and this was the only kind of recompense I could give her. Unfortunately the innocent are always involved in any conflict. Always, everywhere, there is some voice crying from a tower.”

“We do not choose our concerns.”

“God…created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed — that is the meaning of evolution.”

“That instinct for human character that is perhaps inherent in an imaginative writer.”

“A murderer is regarded by the conventional world as something almost monstrous, but a murderer to himself is only an ordinary man…. It is only if the murderer is a good man that he can be regarded as monstrous.”

“[Cubitt hurling insults at Pinky after he refuses to lend him money] The picture Cubitt drew had got nothing to do with him: it was like the pictures men drew of Christ, the image of their own sentimentality. …He was like a professor describing to a stranger some place he had only read in books:…when all the time it was a country the stranger knew…”

“My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.”

“Have you seen a room from which faith has gone?…Like a marriage from which love has gone…And patience, patience everywhere like a fog.”

“…the Boy sat silent. It was he this time who was being warned: life held the vitriol bottle and warned him: I'll spoil your looks.”

“Those who marry God can become domesticated too—it’s just as hum-drum a marriage as all the others. The word “Love” means a formal touch of the lips as in the ceremony of the Mass, and “Ave Maria” like “dearest” is a phrase to open a letter. This marriage like the world’s marriages was held together by habits and tastes shared in common between God and themselves—it was God’s taste to be worshipped and their taste to worship, but only at stated hours like a suburban embrace on a Saturday night.”

“[Rose, taken out for the evening by Pinkie] She had an immense store of trivial memories and when she wasn't living in the future she was living in the past. As for the present – she got through that as quickly as she could, running away from things, running towards things, so that her voice was always a little breathless, her heart pounding at an escape or an expectation.”

“And all that time I couldn’t work. So much of a novelist’s writing, as I have said, takes place in the unconscious: in those depths the last word is written before the first word appears on the paper. We remember details of our story, we do not invent them. War didn’t trouble those deep sea-caves, but not there was something of infinitely greater importance to me than war, than my novel – the end of love. That was being worked out not, like a story: the pointed word that sent her crying, that seemed to have come so spontaneously to the lips, had been sharpened in those underwater caverns. My novel lagged, but my love hurried like inspiration to the end.”