The Power and the Glory

by Graham Greene

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

the dignity of people afraid of a little pain and yet sitting down with some firmness in his chair.

an unhappy man is always prepared.

He had nearly reached the state of permanency too, but he carried about with him the scars of time—the damaged shoes implied a different past, the lines of his face suggested hopes and fears of the future.

They had been used to losing children, but they hadn’t been used to what the rest of the world knows best of all—the hope which peters out.

It is one of the strange discoveries a man can make that life, however you lead it, contains moments of exhilaration; there are always comparisons which can be made with worse times: even in danger and misery the pendulum swings.

penalties of the ecclesiastical kind began to seem unreal in a state where the only penalty was the civil one of death.

It was as if he had descended by means of his sin into the human struggle to learn other things besides despair and love, that a man can be unwelcome even in his own home.

‘The best smell is bread, the best savour salt, the best love that of children.’

Fear would undoubtedly begin again soon. There

He felt envious of the unknown gringo whom they wouldn’t hesitate to trap—he at any rate had no burden of gratitude to carry round with him.

That was the difference, he had always known, between his faith and theirs, the political leaders of the people who cared only for things like the state, the republic: this child was more important than a whole continent.

It was the general condition of life that made for suspicion.

His conscience began automatically to work: it was like a slot machine into which any coin could be fitted, even a cheater’s blank disk.

it was the only evidence left that life had ever been different: he carried it with him as a charm, because if life had been like that once, it might be so again.

the old life peeled away like a label:

He had an immense self-importance; he was unable to picture a world of which he was only a typical part—a world of treachery, violence, and lust in which his shame was altogether insignificant.

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.

they sat on the bed talking, with nothing to do and nothing to believe and nowhere better to go.

it came perpendicularly down, with a sort of measured intensity, as if it were driving nails into a coffin lid.

At the word ‘bastard’ his heart moved painfully, as when a man in love hears a stranger name a flower which is also the name of his woman.

‘Better not to believe-and be a brave man.’

He was still afraid of death, he would be more afraid of death yet when the morning came, but it was beginning to attract him by its simplicity.

‘Such a lot of beauty. Saints talk about the beauty of suffering. Well, we are not saints, you and I. Suffering to us is just ugly. Stench and crowding and pain. That is beautiful in that corner-to them. It needs a lot of learning to see things with a saint’s eye: a saint gets a subtle taste for beauty and can look down on poor ignorant palates like theirs. But we can’t afford to.’

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.

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

instinct is like a sense of duty—one can confuse it with loyalty very easily.

this was human dignity disputing with a bitch over a bone.

It was a mistake one easily made, to think that just because the eyes expressed nothing there was no grief.

Why should anyone listen to his prayers? Sin was a constriction which prevented their escape; he could feel his prayers weigh him down like undigested food.

The fact is, a man isn’t presented suddenly with two courses to follow: one good and one bad. He gets caught up.

‘You always have answers which mean nothing.’

Could say the same of many people.

It wasn’t a very triumphal procession. The priest rode with a weak grin fixed on his face; it was like a mask he had stuck on, so that he could think quietly without anyone noticing. What he thought about mostly was pain.

It isn’t a case of miracles not happening—it’s just a case of people calling them something else.

he tried to smile back, an odd sour grimace, without triumph or hope.

It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage. He felt like someone who has missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted—to be a saint.