The Honorary Consul Quotes

“I have to think of all the possibilities, doctor. Even a crime of passion is possible.’ ‘Passion?’ the doctor smiled. ‘I am an Englishman.”
― Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul

“malnutrition is much safer for the rich than starvation. Starvation makes a man desperate. Malnutrition makes him too tired to raise a fist. The Americans understand that well – the aid they give us makes just that amount of difference. Our people do not starve – they wilt.”
― Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul

“I have never met a simple man. Not even in the confessional, though I used to sit there for hours on end. Man was not created simple. When I was a young priest, I used to try to unravel what motives a man or woman had, what temptations and self-delusions. But I soon learned to give all that up, because there was never a straight answer. No one was simple enough for me to understand. In the end I would just say, 'Three Our Fathers, Three Hail Marys. Go in peace.”
― Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul

“He wanted to take me to the Nacional, but he’s much too drunk for the Nacional – or even my hotel. Now we’ve got to get him home somehow, but he insists on going to see Señora Sanchez.’ ‘A friend of his?’ ‘Of half the men in this town. She runs the only good brothel here – or so they say. I’m not a good judge of that kind of thing myself.’ ‘Surely they are illegal,’ said Doctor Plarr. ‘Not in this city. We are a military headquarters – don’t forget that. The military don’t allow anyone in B.A. to dictate to them here.’ ‘Why not let him go?’ ‘You can see why – he can’t stand up.’ ‘Surely the point of a brothel is that one can lie down?’ ‘Something has to stand up,’ Doctor Humphries said with unexpected coarseness and an expression of distaste.”
― Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul

“For some reason The Taciturn Heart came back to his mind. To fight for one’s honour with knives over a woman, that belonged to another, an absurdly outdated world, which had ceased to exist except in the romantic imagination of writers like Saavedra. Honour meant nothing to the starving. To them belonged the more serious fight for survival.”
― Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul

“Failures like ours are often just failures of hope. Please – cannot you say you are sorry you did not have more hope?”
― Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul

“he recognized the malice which remained alive and kicking in the old man long after discretion had died from a lifetime’s neglect.”
― Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul

“shopping baskets, or tramps, but never readers. A tramp would proudly occupy a whole bench. No one cared to share the bench with a tramp, so unlike the rest of the world he could stretch at full length.”
― Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul

“There's nothing wrong in love. It happens. It doesn't much matter who with. We get caught up, we get kidnapped by mistake.”
― Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul