The Power and the Glory

by Graham Greene

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere.

Pride wavered in his voice like a plant with shallow roots.

He held a small spot of brandy in his glass warily—as if it was an animal to which he gave shelter, but not trust.

He wanted to destroy everything: to be alone without any memories at all. Life began five years ago.

That, of course, was the best solution of all, to leave the living witness to the weakness of their faith.

‘They carry their right on their hips.

She was ready to accept any responsibility, even that of vengeance, without a second thought. It was her life.

angels fell through space like comets with beautiful streaming hair because they were jealous, so one of the Fathers had said, of what God intended for men—the enormous privilege of life—this life.

he at any rate had no burden of gratitude to carry round with him.

The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit. She was without protection—she had no grace, no charm to plead for her; his heart was shaken by the conviction of loss.

It was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization—it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.

It was odd—this fury to deface, because, of course, you could never deface enough. If God had been like a toad, you could have rid the globe of toads, but when God was like yourself, it was no good being content with stone figures—you had to kill yourself among the graves.

I know—from experience—how much beauty Satan carried down with him when he fell.

When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity—that was a quality God’s image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.

That was another mystery: it sometimes seemed to him that venial sins—impatience, an unimportant lie, pride, a neglected opportunity—cut you off from grace more completely than the worst sins of all. Then, in his innocence, he had felt no love for anyone; now in his corruption he had learnt…

Hope is an instinct only the reasoning human mind can kill. An animal never knows despair.

They won’t say it’s a miracle, because that’s a word they don’t like. Then it happens again and again perhaps—because God’s about on earth—and they say: these aren’t miracles, it is simply that we have enlarged our conception of what life is. Now we know you can be alive without pulse, breath, heart-beats. And they invent a new word to describe that state of life, and they say science has disproved a miracle.’

One didn’t trust one’s superiors when one was more successful than they were.