Authors:
  1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. G
  4. Graham Greene
  5. Pain

Graham Greene Quotes about Pain

All Graham Greene Quotes Age Alcohol Character Childhood Children Country Desire Disappointment Drinking Dying Giving Happiness Hate Hatred Heart Home Human Nature Imagination Innocence Journalism Kindness Life Literature Love Lust Lying Memories Pain quotes Passion Pride Sin Sociology Understanding Virtue Wine Writing
The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this

The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.

Graham Greene
Happiness, Pain, Identity
Graham Greene (1951). “The End of the Affair”, London Heinemann [1951]

One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand. Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is because we have been conditioned by what we have read, and if I had never known love at all, perhaps it was because my father's library had not contained the right books.

Graham Greene
Falling In Love, Pain, Father
Graham Greene (1980). “Travels with my aunt”

We forget very easily what gives us pain.

Graham Greene
Pain, Giving, Psychology
"The Collected Edition: The ministry of fear".

One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand.

Graham Greene
Pain, Book, Thinking
Graham Greene (1980). “Travels with my aunt”

They can print statistics and count the populations in hundreds of thousands, but to each man a city consists of no more than a few streets, a few houses, a few people. Remove those few and a city exists no longer except as a pain in the memory, like a pain of an amputated leg no longer there.

Graham Greene
Pain, Memories, Men
Graham Greene (1970). “The Collected Edition: Our man in Havana”

Pain is easy to write. In pain we're all happily individual. But what can one write about happiness?

Graham Greene
Pain, Writing, Easy

Childhood was the germ of all mistrust. You were cruelly joked upon and then you cruelly joked. You lost the remembrance of pain through inflicting it.

Graham Greene
Pain, Remembrance, Childhood
Graham Greene (1970). “The Collected Edition: Our man in Havana”

I could never have been a pacifist. To kill a man was surely to grant him an immeasurable benefit. Oh yes, people always, everywhere, loved their enemies. It was their friends they preserved for pain and vacuity.

Graham Greene
Pain, Men, People
Graham Greene (1973). “The Collected Edition: The quiet American”

I’m not at peace anymore. I just want him like I used to in the old days. I want to be eating sandwiches with him. I want to be drinking with him in a bar. I’m tired and I don’t want anymore pain. I want Maurice. I want ordinary corrupt human love. Dear God, you know I want to want Your pain, but I don’t want it now. Take it away for a while and give it me another time.

Graham Greene
Pain, Drinking, Tired

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.

Graham Greene
Pain, Night, Light
Graham Greene (1971). “The Power and the Glory”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

If only it were possible to love without injury – fidelity isn’t enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. 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 that 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.

Graham Greene
Hurt, Pain, Philosophy
Graham Greene (1973). “The Collected Edition: The quiet American”

I thought I am kissing pain and pain belongs to You as happiness never does. I love You in Your pain. I could almost taste metal and salt in the skin, and I thought, How good you are. You might have killed us with happiness, but You let us be with You in pain.

Graham Greene
Pain, Love You, Kissing
Graham Greene (2010). “The End Of The Affair”, p.98, Random House

You May Also Like: