finished reading heart of the matter by Graham Greene yesterday. To read about the plot and all,
click here . So you might wonder what this post is for. Well, here are some of my favourite lines from the book.
- "It seemed to Scobie life was immeasurably long. Couldn't the test of man have been carried out in fewer years? Couldn't we have committed our first major sin at seven, have ruined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have clutched at redemption on a fifteen year old death bed?" -p.52
- "Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible action. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practises. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing point of reaching absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation." p.60
- "What an absurd thing it was to expect happiness in a world full of misery. He had cut down his needs to a minimum, photographs were put away in drawers, the dead were put out of mind:a razr-strop, a pair of rusty hancuffs for decoration. But one still has one's eyes, he thought, one's ears. Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, evil-or else an absolute ignorance.
- Outside the rest-house he stopped again. The lights inside would have given an extraordinary impression of peace if one had'nt known, just as the stars on this clear night also gave an impression of remoteness, security, freedom. If one knew, he wondered, the facts, would one have to feel pity even for the planets? if one reached what they called the heart of the matter?" p.123-24
