Greene Quotes & Sayings

I remember my first acting class: I was like, 'That's it.' If I know that I want to do something then I'm going to do it and there's no stopping me, whether it's if I want to take a movie part or don't, or eat sushi for lunch or don't. There's always a very clear goal. Once I figure out what I want that's it. — Ashley Greene

String theory has the potential to show that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe - from the frantic dance of subatomic quarks to the stately waltz of orbiting binary stars; from the primordial fireball of the big bang to the majestic swirl of heavenly galaxies - are reflections of one, grand physical principle, one master equation. — Brian Greene

We're on this planet for the briefest of moments in cosmic terms, and I want to spend that time thinking about what I consider the deepest questions. — Brian Greene

Though men determine, the gods doo dispose: and oft times many things fall out betweene the cup and the lip. — Robert Greene

When you understand the fear then you can begin to move past it. So when I hear the people say it's innate, you can't learn it, I just want to hit them in the head. — Robert Greene

Writing about Africa by Africans has been part of my literary apprenticeship, standing alongside works by authors such as Joseph Conrad, Joyce Cary and Graham Greene as influences. — Giles Foden

In my own research when I'm working with equations, I never feel like I really understand what I'm doing if I'm solely relying on the mathematics for my understanding. I need to have a visual picture in my mind. I'm constantly translating from the math to some intuitive mind's-eye picture. — Brian Greene

Your new identity will protect you from the world precisely because it is not "you"; it is a costume you put on and take off. You need not take it personally. And your new identity sets you apart, gives you theatrical presence. Those in the back rows can see you and hear you. Those in the front rows marvel at your audacity. — Robert Greene

It's always the same wherever one goes- it's not the most powerful rulers who have the happiest populations — Graham Greene

The dead of an army become automatically heroes like the dead of the Church become Martyrs. — Graham Greene

Except for the sound of the rain, on the road, on the roofs, on the umbrella, there was absolute silence: only the dying moan of the sirens continued for a moment or two to vibrate within the ear. It seemed to Scobie later that this was the ultimate border he had reached in happiness: being in darkness, alone, with the rain falling, without love or pity. — Graham Greene

Hesitation creates gaps. Boldness obliterates them. — Robert Greene

Somebody always leaves a banana-skin on the scene of tragedy. — Graham Greene

In Mastery author Robert Greene argues that we all have the ability to push the limits of human potential. — Carmine Gallo

Like Johns, I am one of the little men, not interested in ideologies, tied to a flat Cambridgeshire landscape, a chalk quarry, a line of willows across the featureless fields, a market town
his thoughts scrabbled at the curtain
where he used to dance at the Saturday hops. — Graham Greene

I became aware that our love was doomed; love had turned into a love affair with a beginning and an end. I could name the very moment when it had begun, and one day I knew I should be able to name the final hour. When she left the house I couldn't settle to work. I would reconstruct what we had said to each other; I would fan myself into anger or remorse. And all the time I knew I was forcing the pace. I was pushing, pushing the only thing I loved out of my life. As long as I could make believe that love lasted I was happy; I think I was even good to live with, and so love did last. But if love had to die, I wanted it to die quickly. It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death; I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck. — Graham Greene

I'm a big believer in being an entrepreneur. It's easy for me to say because I work for myself and I am someone who likes that process. You have control over your destiny. — Robert Greene

Every moment is as real as every other. Every 'now,' when you say, 'This is the real moment,' is as real as every other 'now' - and therefore all the moments are just out there. Just as every location in space is out there, I think every moment in time is out there, too. — Brian Greene

In the mind of every artist there is a masterpiece — Kai Greene

Boldness ... is outer directed ... and makes others feel more at ease because it's less self-conscious. — Robert Greene

Sadness of any sort is also seductive, particularly if it seems deep-rooted, even spiritual, rather than needy or pathetic - it makes people come to you. — Robert Greene

He pulled his mouth from mine, and it confused me. Hell, looking into his eyes now baffled me. "Greene, you're gonna make me ruin you." "So ruin me. — G.L. Tomas

Like a goddess on her azure hill, the star of my ambition, the mistress of my dream; a thing apart, that we can worship, but not touch; a wild desire, that, in the madness of the thought, soars higher in its dignity, and leaves me weeping in the dust. — William Batchelder Greene

I looked at my reflection in the mirror. My cycle had begun. I was now a woman. I was ready to do God's work. — Michele Dominguez Greene

Oh,' the priest said, 'that's another thing altogether - God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us - God's love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn't it, and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around. — Graham Greene

Do not wait for a coronation; the greatest emperors crown themselves. — Robert Greene

I've just decided that I have to continue to live my life and do what I do. Hopefully, people love me because of who I am, not who I pretend to be. — Ashley Greene

I would say in one sentence my goal is to at least be part of the journey to find the unified theory that Einstein himself was really the first to look for. He didn't find it, but we think we're hot on the trail. — Brian Greene

What have we all got to expect that we allow ourselves to be so lined with disappointment? — Graham Greene

I do feel strongly that string theory is our best hope for making progress at unifying gravity and quantum mechanics. — Brian Greene

A relationship can push us into having to confront certain areas of life, even if natally we are neither predisposed nor well equipped to cope in that area. — Liz Greene

Let's not forget we created that ideal middle class by destroying all of our industrial competitors during World War II. — Jeff Greene

The world doesn't make any heroes anymore. — Graham Greene

Waste brings woe, and sorrow hates despair. — Robert Greene

I'm not at peace anymore. I just want him like I used to in the old days. I want to be eating sandwiches with him. I want to be drinking with him in a bar. I'm tired and I don't want anymore pain. I want Maurice. I want ordinary corrupt human love. Dear God, you know I want to want Your pain, but I don't want it now. Take it away for a while and give it me another time. — Graham Greene

You know, my brother won't walk out of a restaurant with me anymore because he doesn't want to be linked to me as my new 'mystery man.' Same with my close guy friends. — Ashley Greene

As the world community develops in peace, it will open up great untapped reservoirs in human nature. — Emily Greene Balch

My stance has always been that there's no place in our sport for drug users. I've always said it's a ban for life if you come up positive. I stand by that. — Maurice Greene

You can't just lecture the poor that they shouldn't riot or go to extremes. You have to make the means of legal redress available. — Harold H. Greene

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. — Graham Greene

I recognized my work for what it was
as unimportant a drug as cigarettes to get one through the weeks and years. If we are extinguished by death, as I still try to believe, what point is there in leaving some books behind any more than bottles, clothes, or cheap jewellry? — Graham Greene

As long as one suffers one lives. — Graham Greene

It was like having a box of chocolates shut in the bedroom drawer. Until the box was empty it occupied the mind too much. — Graham Greene

They killed him because he was too innocent to live. He was young and ignorant and silly and he got involved. He had no more of a notion than any of you what the whole affair's about ... — Graham Greene

It's not really much good tearing out a page because you can see the place where it's been torn. [ ... ] You can pull a stamp out,' she said with terrible youthful clarity, 'and you don't know that it's ever been there. — Graham Greene

As Nietzsche wrote, "The value of a thing sometimes lies not in what one attains with it, but in what one pays for it - what it costs us." Perhaps you will attain your goal, and a worthy goal at that, but at what price? Apply this standard to everything, including whether to collaborate with other people or come to their aid. In the end, life is short, opportunities are few, and you have only so much energy to draw on. And in this sense time is as important a consideration as any other. Never waste valuable time, or mental peace of mind, on the affairs of others - that is too high a price to pay. Power — Robert Greene

A book is like a sandy path which keeps the indent of footprints. — Graham Greene

I have an argument that to master any field, it's simple: it's a function of time. How much you devote yourself to the process, how much experience you get, how much you're willing to expand your limits, how willing you are to develop your own style. If you're willing to put 10,000 hours, something amazing is going to happen. — Robert Greene

Oh, he was a decent-enough high school student, good grades and well-liked, but his test scores were nothing to write home about. He might as well have Christmas-treed the math test. — Thomas Christopher Greene

Competition is good and has served us well. — Harold H. Greene

The moment you get down on yourself, is the moment you feel defeated. If you feel defeated, you let the peope around you down. — Jordan Greene

She was like a landscape you see from the train, and you want to stop just there. — Graham Greene

If you lead the sucker down a familiar path, he won't catch on when you lead him into a trap. — Robert Greene

One of the strangest features of string theory is that it requires more than the three spatial dimensions that we see directly in the world around us. That sounds like science fiction, but it is an indisputable outcome of the mathematics of string theory. — Brian Greene

You are lovely, brilliant, witty ... the incredible words which would relieve her of any need to repay him or refuse his gifts; loveliness and wit were priced higher than any gift he offered, while if a girl were loved, even old women of hard experience would admit her right to take and never give. — Graham Greene

Hip-hop, you can't really do that when you're in your 50s. — Robert Greene

The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation. — Graham Greene

My style has definitely evolved. When I first started out I think I was a little all over the place and the clothes kind of wore me rather than the other way round. But now I'm at the point where I'm comfortable dressing for me, I know what works and what I like. — Ashley Greene

Hasty climbers have sudden falls. — Robert Greene

The time that leads to mastery is dependent on the intensity of our focus. — Robert Greene

I wondered whether she would consent to sleep with me that night if Pyle never came, but I knew that when I had smoked four pipes I would no longer want her. — Graham Greene

Just as we envision all of space as really being out there, as really existing,
we should also envision all of time as really being out there, as really
existing too. — Brian Greene

I've always loved black culture; I don't know any other way to put it. Since I was a kid I loved music and early jazz, Sly and the Family Stone. — Robert Greene

For most people, the major hurdle in grasping modern insights into the nature of the universe is that these developments are usually phrased using mathematics. — Brian Greene

Understand: your mind is weaker than your emotions. But you become aware of this weakness only in moments of adversity
precisely the time when
you need strength. What best equips you to cope with tthe heat of battle is neither more knowledge nor more intellect. What makes your mind stronger, and more able to control your emotions, is internal discipline and toughness.No one can teach you this skill; you cannot learn it by reading about it. Like any discipline, it can come only through practice, experience, even a little suffering. The first step in building up presence of mind is to see the need for ii
to want it badly enough to be willing to work for it. — Robert Greene

...time can be slowed if you live deliberately. If you stop and watch sunsets. If you spend time sitting on porches listening to the woods. If you give in to the reality of the seasons. — Thomas Christopher Greene

With writing ... you must keep in the habit. After a lapse it will take you not an hour, but a week, a month, maybe, to find your mood again - that mood in which things drop from heaven. There's no forcing it; you can't set your notions in front of you, and stare at them till they take shape; they have to come to you whether you ask them or not ... And you have to be in the habit of that mood! Of inspiration! — Anne Bosworth Greene

We might be the holographic image of a two-dimensional structure. — Brian Greene

Lean against the edge, sweetheart. I'm falling off.
Brent Greene — Gena Showalter

Now, from special relativity we know that energy and mass are two sides of the same coin: Greater energy means greater mass, and vice versa. Thus, according to string theory, the mass of an elementary particle is determined by the energy of the vibrational pattern of its internal string. Heavier particles have internal strings that vibrate more energetically, while lighter particles have internal strings that vibrate less energetically. — Brian Greene

As scientists, we track down all promising leads, and there's reason to suspect that our universe may be one of many - a single bubble in a huge bubble bath of other universes. — Brian Greene

Suddenly I realized she was asleep. Exhausted by her flight she had fallen asleep against my shoulder as so many times, in taxis, in buses, on a park-seat. I sat still and let her be. There was nothing to disturb her in the dark church. The candles napped around the virgin, and there was nobody else there. The slowly growing pain in my upper arm where her weight lay was the greatest pleasure I had ever known. — Graham Greene

She thought for the first time, with happiness: perhaps I have a life in people's minds when I am not there to be seen or talked to. — Graham Greene

It is a rich storehouse for those who love quotations. It is as full of fine bon mots as a Christmas pudding is full of plums. — Fitz-Greene Halleck

Movie theaters barely make any money. A movie can make a couple of thousand dollars, or could get lucky and make ten or fifteen thousand dollars, but theatrical releases don't really sustain the work. For me, it's the best sort of advertisement for anything else you'd want to do. — Robert Greene

Cynicism is cheap - you can buy it at any monoprix store. it's built into all poor-quality goods. — Graham Greene

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

By acknowledging a petty problem you give it existence and credibility. The more attention you pay an enemy, the stronger you make him; and a small mistake is often made worse and more visible when you try to fix it. It is sometimes best to leave things alone. If there is something you want but cannot have, show contempt for it. The less interest you reveal, the more superior you seem. — Robert Greene

The universe, according to quantum mechanics, participates in a game of chance. — Brian Greene

A noble mind disdains to hide his head, And let his foes triumph in his overthrow. — Robert Greene

It is you who are old fashioned with your machine-guns and your gas and your talk of country. — Graham Greene

I can assure you that no string theorist would be interested in working on string theory if it were somehow permanently beyond testability. That would no longer be doing science. — Brian Greene

Pathology, probably more than any other branch of science, suffers from heroes and hero-worship. Rudolf Virchow has been its archangel and William Welch its John the Baptist, while Paracelsus and Cohnheim have been relegated to the roles of Lucifer and Beelzebub ... Actually, there are no heroes in Pathology-all of the great thoughts permitting advance have been borrowed from other fields, and the renaissance of pathology stems not from pathology itself but from the philosophers Kant and Goethe. — Harry S.N. Greene

Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener. Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519 — Robert Greene

Oh, I'm not a Berkeleian. I believe my back's against this wall. I believe there's a sten gun over there. — Graham Greene

blissful as ignorance, — Brian Greene

Beauty is like success: we can't love it for long. — Graham Greene

According to string theory, if we could examine these particles with even greater precision - a precision many orders of magnitude beyond our present technological capacity - we would find that each is not pointlike, but instead consists of a tiny one-dimensional loop. Like an infinitely thin rubber band, each particle contains a vibrating, oscillating, dancing filament that physicists, lacking Gell-Mann's literary flair, have named a string. — Brian Greene

It's hard to teach passionately about something that you don't have a passion for. — Brian Greene

Sometimes I see myself reflected too closely in other men for comfort, and then I have an enormous wish to believe in the saints, in heroic virtue. — Graham Greene

There was not much one could do; he decided at least to be good. — Graham Greene

Unhappiness in a child accumulates because he sees no end to the dark tunnel. The thirteen weeks of a term might just as well be thirteen years. — Graham Greene

Time allows change to take place and the very evolution of the universe is what requires some conception of time. Mathematically can we write down a universe that doesn't have time? Sure. Do we think that would be realised in the larger reality that is out there? None of us take that possibility seriously. — Brian Greene

The class stared at the new girl with admiration. They had never met anyone like Gooney Bird Greene. She was a good student. She sat down at the desk Mrs. Pidgeon provided, right smack in the middle of everything, and began doing second grade spelling. — Lois Lowry

I focus on having a feminine body, a dancer's body. I do resistance and dance and cardio. I like hiking, swimming, being active. It clears your mind and it's a good way to decompress. — Ashley Greene

Americans tend to use "nation" as a synonym for "country." But political scientists and historians, as well as many Europeans, tend to use the term for a much more specific phenomenon: a group of people who feel they belong together, whether they have a country of their own or not. — Robert Lane Greene

A person's got to think, otherwise that person's no better than a trained seal balancing a ball on his nose. If only that seal could think, he'd know he was making a thousand children laugh. — Bette Greene

You never know, when you're going in to work with people if they're gonna be friendly or judgmental, or what have you. There's a ton of insecurities that go into my head, before I start working with someone. — Ashley Greene

Everything that happens to you is a form of instruction if you pay attention. — Robert Greene

I hate your reasons. I don't want reasons. If you see somebody in pain, people like you reason and reason. You say - pain is a good thing, perhaps he'll be better for it one day. I want to let my heart speak ... Yes. At the end of a gun. — Graham Greene