Quote #7

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.

More from Graham Greene

  1. The economy of a novelist is a little like that of a careful housewife who is unwilling to throw away anything that might perhaps serve its…
  2. It is the story-teller's task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.
  3. Childhood was the germ of all mistrust. You were cruelly joked upon and then you cruelly joked. You lost the remembrance of pain through in…
  4. Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.
  5. Reality in our century is not something to be faced.
  6. 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 on…
  7. In a mad world it always seems simpler to obey.
  8. Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and the simple, however cruel; our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt.

All Graham Greene quotes