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"She got up and he saw the skin of her thigh for a moment above the artificial silk, and a prick of sexual desire disturbed him like a sickness. That was what happened to a man in the end: the stuffy room, the wakeful children, the Saturday night movements from the other bed. Was there no escape""anywhere""for anyone? It was worth murdering a world."
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"Be confidently assured that any 'gods' that we build will always have veracious appetites, and sooner or later they will gorge themselves on that which built them."

"The temptation to spend money increases as a person's opportunities increase."

"Thou therefore on these Herbs, and Fruits, and Flow'rsFeed first, on each Beast next, and Fish, and Fowl, No homely morsels, and whatever thingThe Scyth of Time mows down, devour unspar'd, Till I in Man residing through the Race, His thoughts, his looks, words, actions all infect, And season him thy last and sweetest prey."

"Opportunity may only knock once, but temptation'll knock down the damn door and drag you out by the hair."

"Booze and boys, ain't nothing in the universe that'll make a girl stupid faster."

"Pleasure, in itself harmless, may become mischievous, by endearing to us a state which we know to be transient and probatory, and withdrawing our thoughts from that of which every hour brings us nearer to the beginning, and of which no length of time will bring us to the end. Mortification is not virtuous in itself, nor has any other use, but that it disengages us from the allurements of sense. In the state of future perfection, to which we all aspire, there will be pleasure without danger, and security without restraint."

"Every sexual sin begins with flattery."

"The word lust can mean "selfish desire". . . .It is wanting something so badly you will do anything to get it. That is one of the tricks of the devil. It is too high a price to pay."

"To use a man for what he is naturally best fitted is to keep him, if one can, from apostasy and dissatisfaction. At the same time, life's temptations come most often from that for which one has the greatest aptitude."
Explore more quotes by Graham Greene

"The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about. At that moment he's alive and you leave it to him."

"The influence of early books is profound. So much of the future lies on the shelves. Early reading has more influence than any religious teaching."

"It takes a long time before we cease to feel proud of being wanted. Though God knows why we should feel it, when we look around and see who is wanted too."

"A black boy brought Wilson's gin and he sipped it very slowly because he had nothing else to do except to return to his hot and squalid room and read a novel - or a poem. Wilson liked poetry, but he absorbed it secretly, like a drug. The Golden Treasury accompanied him wherever he went, but it was taken at night in small doses - a finger of Longfellow, Macaulay, Mangan: 'Go on to tell how, with genius wasted, Betrayed in friendship, befooled in love...' His taste was romantic. For public exhibition he has his Wallace. He wanted passionately to be indistinguishable on the surface from other men: he wore his moustache like a club tie - it was his highest common factor, but his eyes betrayed him - brown dog's eyes, a setter's eyes, pointing mournfully towards Bond Street."

"I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing."

"If I stopped loving Him, I would cease to believe in His love. If I loved God, then I would believe in His love for me. It's not enough to need it. We have to love first, and I don't know how. But I need it, how I need it."

"You should dream more, Mr. Wormold. Reality in our century is not something to be faced."
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