Joseph Conrad Quotes:

I don't like work... but I like what is in work - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality - for yourself, not for others - which no other man can ever know.

source: - Heart of Darkness ch. 1 (1902)

Topics: Work, Reality, Men

I slipped the book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship.

Topics: Book, Reading, Pockets

You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget.

Topics: Lying, Hate, Bears, Flavour, Heart Of Darkness

Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.

Topics: Funny, Hilarious, Women, International Women's Day, Sexy Women

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

source: - Under Western Eyes pt. 2, ch. 4 (1911)

Topics: Inspirational, Men, Evil, Necessary Evil, Evil Man

I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.

Topics: Peace, Men, Relaxation, Achieving Peace

He struggled with himself, too. I saw it -- I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.

Topics: Struggle, Soul, Saws

They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force--nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.

Topics: Weakness, Want, Brute Force, Heart Of Darkness

The mind of man is capable of anything.

Topics: Heart, Men, Mind, Heart Of Darkness

The atmosphere of officialdom would kill anything that breathes the air of human endeavour, would extinguish hope and fear alike in the supremacy of paper and ink.

Topics: Air, Atmosphere, Ink

History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.

Topics: Song, Art, History, History Repeats Itself, Repeating History

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

Topics: Ambition, Feet, Literature, Credulity, My Ambition

He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.

Topics: Wisdom, Intelligence, Want, Speaking In Public, Power Of Persuasion

I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude - and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.

Topics: Thinking, Solitude, Hollow

We live as we dream--alone....

Topics: Love, Dream, Dreamer

Your strength is just an accident owed to the weakness of others.

Topics: Strength, Weakness, Accidents

His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain -- why he did not instantly disappear.

Topics: Problem, Disappear, Inexplicable

Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.

Topics: Art, Lines, Should

You must squeeze out of yourself every sensation, every thought, every image, - mercilessly, without reserve and without remorse: you must search the darkest corners of your heart, the most remote recesses of your brain, - you must search them for the image, for the glamour, for the right expression. And you must do it sincerely, at any cost: you must do it so that at the end of your day's work you should feel exhausted, emptied of every sensation and every thought, with a blank mind and an aching heart, with the notion that there is nothing, - nothing left in you.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Selected Letters of Joseph Conrad”, p.41, Cambridge University Press

Topics: Heart, Expression, Brain, Recess, Blank Mind

... it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.

Topics: Struggle, Choices, Loyal, Heart Of Darkness

We can never cease to be ourselves.

Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy

Topics: Grief, Apathy, May

Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off.

source: - Joseph Conrad (1962). “The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'”, p.6, Gottfried & Fritz

Topics: Art, Writing, Life Is Short

They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance.

Topics: Stupid, Perfect, Laughing, Flaunting, Intruders

Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time.

Topics: Wise, Men, Fool, Nautical, Boats And Sailing

A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

Topics: Writing, Men, Fellow Man, Fiction Writers, Foibles

The true peace of God begins at any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land.

Topics: Ocean, Land, Miles, Land And Sea

I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmostphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary.

Topics: Victory, Desire, Belief, Clamour, Scepticism

What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow men's existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history.

Topics: Strong, Pride, Reality

Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear.

Topics: Life, Dream, Fear

The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement - but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims.

Topics: Nature, Intelligent, Leader, Unselfish, Revolutionary Leaders

It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog.

source: - 1915 Victory, author's note.

Topics: Blessed, Fog, Achievement, Rulership, Great Achievement

A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.

Topics: Body, Faces, Caricatures

Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.

Topics: Reality, Gossip, Claims, Gossiping And Rumors

It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull.

Topics: Ironic, Dull, Safe

A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavor to do, he drowns.

Topics: Love, Dream, Fall

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.

Topics: Peace, Mean, Earth, Discrimination And Racism, Racial Discrimination

We live in the flicker -- may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday.

Topics: Yesterday, Long, Darkness

All a man can betray is his conscience.

Topics: Men, Betray, Conscience, Being Betrayed, Betraying Friends

There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.

Topics: Halloween, Moon, Night, Inspirational Halloween, Spooky Halloween

My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.

Topics: Encouragement, Trying, Demand

Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.

Topics: Art, Philosophy, Character

It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth.

Topics: Fate, People, Waiting

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.

Topics: Writing, Reality, Speech, Written Word

The sea - this truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness - has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.

Topics: Power, Sea, Generosity, Manly, Irresponsible

There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.

Topics: Sea, Boat, Enticing, Mariners, Ocean Sea

It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.

Topics: Mistake, Age

My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.

source: - The Nigger of the Narcissus preface (1897)

Topics: Writing, Trying, Tasks, Power Of Words, Fiction Writers

Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2002). “Typhoon and Other Tales”, p.64, Oxford University Press, USA

Topics: Courage, Cheer Up, Army, Accepting Reality, Getting Sober

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.

Topics: Memories, Passion, Play, Pretence, Our Memories

In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility.

Topics: Moving, Order, Literature, Carried Away

Reality, as usual, beats fiction out of sight.

source: - Letter, 11 Aug. 1915

Topics: Reality, Sight, Usual

In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent.

Topics: Travel, Sky, Water, Firing, Immensity

To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.

source: - Sarah Dessen (2008). “Just Listen”, p.349, Penguin

Topics: Teacher, Communication, Men, Parrots

Like a flash of lightning between the clouds, we live in the flicker.

Topics: Life, Clouds, Lightning

The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.

Topics: Ocean, Men, Sea, Ocean Sea, Ocean Water

Joy and sorrow in this world pass into each other, mingling their forms and their murmurs in the twilight of life as mysterious as an overshadowed ocean, while the dazzling brightness of supreme hopes lies far off, fascinating and still, on the distant edge of the horizon

source: - Joseph Conrad (2005). “A Personal Record: Some Reminiscences”, p.18, Cosimo, Inc.

Topics: Lying, Twilight, Ocean, Joys And Sorrows, Dazzling

The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil water-way leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

Topics: Heart, Sky, Clouds, Storm Clouds, Overcast

Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy!

Topics: Simple, Ideas, Doors, Crumbs, Tramps

Let a fool be made serviceable according to his folly.

Topics: Fool, Made, Folly

One ship is very much like another and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny.

Topics: Ignorance, Destiny, Past, Inscrutable, Seamen

Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets.

Topics: Life, Regret, Knowledge

A man is a worker. If he is not that he is nothing.

Topics: Life, Success, Men

A writing may be lost; a lie may be written; but what the eye has seen is truth and remains in the mind!

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “Joseph Conrad Ultimate Collection: 18 Novels, 20+ Short Stories, Letters & Memoirs: Including Classics like Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Duel, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, Victory, The Shadow-Line & Under Western Eyes”, p.4130, e-artnow

Topics: Lying, Writing, Eye

Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

source: - Some Reminiscences ch. 1 (1912)

Topics: Art, Imagination, Invention

Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

Topics: Life, Art, Writing

Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life.

Topics: Life, Nature, Men, Blades Of Grass

You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.

source: - Lord Jim (1900) ch. 34

Topics: Friendship, Men, Judging

One can't live with one's finger everlastingly on one's pulse.

Topics: Pulse, Fingers

For a bag of pepper, they could cut each other's throats without hesitation, and would forswear their souls... The bizarre obstinacy of that desire made them defy death in a thousand shapes; the unknown seas, the loathsome diseases; wounds, captivity, hunger, pestilence and despair. It made them great! By heavens! It made them heroic; and it made them pathetic, too, in their craving for trade with the inflexible death levying its toll on young and old

Topics: Cutting, Sea, Heaven, Old Soul

And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose.

Topics: Sea, Land, Choices, Singleness

I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts.

Topics: Dream, Silly, Beer

The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket. Revolution, legality--counter-moves in the same game; forms of idleness at bottom identical.

Topics: Moving, Games, Police, Legality

For a moment I had a view of a world that seemed to wear a vast and dismal aspect of disorder, while, in truth, thanks to our unwearied efforts, it is as sunny an arrangement of small conveniences as the mind of man can conceive.

Topics: Men, Views, Effort

The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver - over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a sombre gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself.

Topics: Wall, Men, Moon

Everything belonged to him--but that was a trifle. The thing to know was what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.

Topics: Darkness, Trifles, Heart Of Darkness

I suppose everybody must be always just a little homesick.

Topics: Littles, Homesick

claiming that the destructive practice of mountaintop removal mining, blowing the tops off mountains to get at the coal beneath, performs the "necessary" function of creating flat land for development To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe.

Topics: Land, Practice, Creating, Removal, Burglars

5: Social security will break small business, become a huge tax burden on our citizens, and bankrupt our country! 1944: The G.I. Bill will break small business, become a huge tax burden on our citizens, and bankrupt our country! 1965: Medicare will break small business, become a huge tax burden on our citizens, and bankrupt our country! 1994: Health care will break small business, become a huge tax burden on our citizens, and bankrupt our country!

Topics: Country, Citizens, Care, Tax Burden

There is never enough time to say our last word-the last word of our love, of our desire, faith, remorse, submission, revolt.

Topics: Desire, Enough Time, Our Love

He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable.

Topics: Midst, Abomination

It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.

I would not unduly praise the virtue of restraint. It is often merely temperamental. But it is not always a sign of coldness. It may be pride. There can be nothing more humiliating than to see the shaft of one's emotion miss the mark of either laughter or tears. Nothing more humiliating! And this for the reason that should the mark be missed, should the open display of emotion fail to move, then it must perish unavoidably in disgust or contempt.

Topics: Laughter, Moving, Pride

The way of even the most jusitifiable revolution is prepared by personal impulses disguised into creeds.

Topics: Way, Revolution, Creeds

The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket.

Topics: Terrorism, Baskets, Terrorist

For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world of straightforward facts; but the feeling would not last long. Something would turn up to scare it away.

Topics: Long, Feelings, Scare

I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced

Topics: Voice, Evil, Speech

I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go

Topics: Mind, Legs

A train of thought is never false. The falsehood lies deep in the necessities of existence.

Topics: Life, Lying, Existence, Train Of Thought

Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please.

Topics: Tombstone, Sleep, Sea, Faerie

Here's the main page of motivational quotes, if you want a different topic. Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.

Topics: Gossip, Topics, Different

Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted.

Topics: Accepted, Being Accepted, Understood

Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end.

Topics: Men, Race, History

To be busy with material affairs is the best preservative against reflection, fears, doubts ... all these things which stand in the way of achievement. I suppose a fellow proposing to cut his throat would experience a sort of relief while occupied in stropping his razor carefully.

Topics: Cutting, Reflection, Achievement

The last thing a woman will consent to in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.

Topics: Life, Courage, Men

It is very difficult to be wholly joyous or wholly sad on this earth. The comic, when he is human, soon takes upon itself the face of pain.

Topics: Happiness, Pain, Joy

It is the mark of an inexperienced man not to believe in luck.

Topics: Believe, Men, Luck, Best Of Luck

In plucking the fruit of memory one runs the risk of spoiling its bloom, especially if it has got to be carried into the market.

Topics: Running, Memories, Risk

I -- I alone know how to mourn for him as he deserves.' But while we were still shaking hands, such a look of awful desolation came upon her face that I perceived she was one of those creatures that are not the playthings of Time. For her he had died only yesterday. And, by Jove! the impression was so powerful that for me, too, he seemed to have died only yesterday -- nay, this very minute. I saw her and him in the same instant of time -- his death and her sorrow -- I saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death. Do you understand? I saw them together -- I heard them together.

Topics: Powerful, Hands, Yesterday, Desolation, Shaking Hands

I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance.

Topics: Stupid, Laughing, Desire

The sea never changes and its works, for all the talks of men, are wrapped in mystery.

Topics: Nature, Travel, Men

The ethical view of the universe involves us in so many cruel and absurd contradictions that I have come to suspect that the aim of creation cannot be ethical at all.

Topics: Views, Atheism, Creation

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.

Topics: Memories, Vanity, Play

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind. All intellectual and artistic ambitions are permissible, up to and even beyond the limit of prudent sanity. They can hurt no one.

Topics: Hurt, Ambition, Intellectual

There is something haunting in the light of the moon.

Topics: Moon, Light, Haunting

That faculty of beholding at a hint the face of his desire and the shape of his dream, without which the earth would know no lover and no adventurer.

Topics: Dream, Adventure, Desire

Things and men have always a certain sense, a certain side by which they must be got hold of if one wants to obtain a solid grasp and a perfect command.

Topics: Knowledge, Men, Perfect

If you don't make mistakes, you don't make anything .

Topics: Mistake, Making Mistakes, Ifs

Necessity, they say, is mother of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions.

source: - Joseph Conrad “The Secret Sharer and Other Stories”, W. W. Norton & Company

Topics: Mother, Suggestions, Invention, Ingenious

Follow your bliss. Find where it is and don't be afraid to follow it.

Topics: Inspirational, Commitment, Goal, Follow Your Bliss

We live as we dream - alone. While the dream disappears, the life continues painfully.

Topics: Dream, Disappear

All roads are long which lead to one's heart's desire.

Topics: Heart, Long, Desire

Never test another man by your own weakness.

Topics: Men, Weakness, Tests

The human heart is vast enough to contain all the world.

source: - Joseph Conrad (1905). “Lord Jim”, p.302, McClure, Phillips & Company

Topics: Heart, World, Enough

The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history.

Topics: Discovery, America, Greed, Discovery Of America

I like what is in the work -- the chance to find yourself.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2012). “Heart of Darkness: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.41, Penguin

Topics: Finding Yourself, Chance

Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “Joseph Conrad’s Sea Tales - Premium Collection: An Outcast of the Islands, The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’, A Smile of Fortune, Typhoon and more: Classics of World Literature from One of the Greatest English Novelists (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)”, p.1113, e-artnow

Topics: Moving, Giving, World, Absent Minded

It’s extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it’s just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “Greatest Works of Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, The Duel, Lord Jim, Victory, The Shadow-Line, The Arrow of Gold, The Secret Agent, The Nigger of the Narcissus & Under Western Eyes: Classics of World Literature from One of the Greatest English Novelists (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)”, p.185, e-artnow

Topics: Life, Eye, Majority, Dormant

To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “Complete Short Stories of Joseph Conrad (Including His Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays: Unforgettable Tales like Heart of Darkness, Point of Honor, Falk, Secret Sharer, The Return & Freya of Seven Isles”, p.1325, e-artnow

Topics: Enlightenment, Literature, Path

Kisses are the remnants of paradise.

Topics: Kissing, Paradise, Remnants

It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self knowledge.

source: - Joseph Conrad (1905). “Lord Jim”, p.73, McClure, Phillips & Company

Topics: Men, Self, Shadow

The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2016). “Lord Jim”, p.166, Joseph Conrad

One must explore deep and believe the incredible to find the new particles of truth floating in an ocean of insignificance.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Selected Letters of Joseph Conrad”, p.145, Cambridge University Press

Topics: Believe, Ocean, Floating

Protection is the first necessity of opulence and luxury.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad: 20 Novels & 26 Short Stories (Including Memoirs, Essays & Letters in One Single Edition): Classics of World Literature from One of the Greatest English Novelists: Heart of Darkness, The Duel, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, The Shadow-Line & Under Western Eyes”, p.2018, e-artnow

Topics: Luxury, Opulence, Firsts, Secret Agent

As a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2016). “Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels [Nostromo, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, etc.] (Book House)”, p.1301, Book House

Topics: Achievement, Reputation, Built

That's why love is so inseparable from any talk about truth and death, because we know that love is fundamentally a death of an old self that was isolated and the emergence of a new self now entangled with another self, the self that you fall in love with.

Topics: Falling In Love, Love Is, Self, New Self

Happiness, happiness ... the flavor is with you-with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you please.

Topics: Happiness, Flavor, Please

A certain simplicity of thought is common to serene souls at both ends of the social scale.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad: 20 Novels & 26 Short Stories (Including Memoirs, Essays & Letters in One Single Edition): Classics of World Literature from One of the Greatest English Novelists: Heart of Darkness, The Duel, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, The Shadow-Line & Under Western Eyes”, p.2084, e-artnow

Topics: Simplicity, Soul, Common

A word carries far, very far, deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space.

source: - Lord Jim ch. 15 (1900)

Topics: Space, Flying, Bullets

What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2011). “Joseph Conrad's Letters to R. B. Cunninghame Graham”, p.70, Cambridge University Press

Topics: Victim, Conscious, Tragic

All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Complete Novels of Joseph Conrad - All 20 Works in One Premium Edition: Including Unforgettable Titles like Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, Under Western Eyes and Many More (With Author’s Letters, Memoirs and Critical Essays)”, p.4543, e-artnow

Topics: Art, Creativity, Creative, Edification

[The artist] speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation--and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear…which binds together all humanity--the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2007). “The Portable Conrad”, p.48, Penguin

Topics: Dream, Art, Pain, Creating Beauty

A man's most open actions have a secret side to them.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “Joseph Conrad Ultimate Collection: 18 Novels, 20+ Short Stories, Letters & Memoirs: Including Classics like Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Duel, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, Victory, The Shadow-Line & Under Western Eyes”, p.2311, e-artnow

Topics: Men, Keeping Secrets, Literature

Violence is not a catalyst but a diversion.

Topics: Violence, Catalyst, Diversion

There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2013). “Nostromo”, p.274, Courier Corporation

Topics: Intellectual, Misery, Moral, Credulity

God is for men, and religion for women.

Topics: Women, Men, Men Women

Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall.

Topics: Wall, Writing, Mud

The real significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind.

source: - Joseph Conrad (1905). “Lord Jim”, p.145, McClure, Phillips & Company

Topics: Real, Community, Crime

A fool has more ideas than a wise man can foresee.

Topics: Wise, Ignorance, Men

I am afraid that if you want to go down into history you'll have to do something for it.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2007). “The Secret Agent”, p.84, Penguin

Topics: Want, Ifs

Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you, smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, "Come and find out".

source: - Joseph Conrad (2016). “Heart of Darkness”, p.15, Xist Publishing

Topics: Mean, Thinking, Air, Insipid

Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes.

source: - Joseph Conrad, Bruce Harkness, S. W. Reid (1990). “The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale”, p.31, Cambridge University Press

Topics: Madness, Persuasion, Threat

Everything can be found at sea according to the spirit of your quest.

source: - Joseph Conrad (1998). “Sea Stories”, p.9, Wordsworth Editions

Topics: Sea, Quests, Spirit

You can't, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “Complete Short Stories of Joseph Conrad (Including His Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays: Unforgettable Tales like Heart of Darkness, Point of Honor, Falk, Secret Sharer, The Return & Freya of Seven Isles”, p.1154, e-artnow

Topics: Integrity, Men, Honor, Personal Integrity, Man Of Integrity

Conrad placed on the title page an epigraph taken from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene: "Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please" This also became Conrad's epitaph.

Topics: Taken, Sleep, Sea, Spenser, Faerie

I do not know whether I have been a good seaman, but I know I have been a very faithful one.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Complete Novels of Joseph Conrad - All 20 Works in One Premium Edition: Including Unforgettable Titles like Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, Under Western Eyes and Many More (With Author’s Letters, Memoirs and Critical Essays)”, p.4350, e-artnow

Topics: Faithful, Seamen, Knows

Nowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks, and months fall away quicker into the past. They seem to be left astern as easily as the light air-bubbles in the swirls of the ship's wake.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2016). “The Mirror of the Sea”, p.7, Xist Publishing

Topics: Fall, Past, Light

But it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker - may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling!

source: - "Heart of Darkness and Other Stories".

Topics: Life, Clouds, Lightning, Flicker

Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart - its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life.

source: - Joseph Conrad, Robert Kimbrough (1963). “Heart of darkness: an authoritative text, backgrounds and sources, ess ays in criticism”

Topics: Home, Heart, Reality, Concealed

The artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition-and therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty and pain.

source: - The Nigger of the Narcissus preface (1897)

Topics: Art, Pain, Acquisition

Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2016). “Under Western Eyes”, p.39, Joseph Conrad

Topics: Lonely, Memories, Loneliness, One Tree Hill Opening, One Tree Hill Voiceover

Being a lady is a frightfully troublesome assignment, since it comprises mainly in managing men.

Topics: Men, Assignments, Being A Lady, Troublesome

One wonders that there can be found a man courageous enough to occupy the post. It is a matter of meditation. Having given it a few minutes I come to the conclusion in the serenity of my heart and the peace of my conscience that he must be either an extreme megalomaniac or an utterly unconscious being.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “Greatest Works of Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, The Duel, Lord Jim, Victory, The Shadow-Line, The Arrow of Gold, The Secret Agent, The Nigger of the Narcissus & Under Western Eyes: Classics of World Literature from One of the Greatest English Novelists (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)”, p.2410, e-artnow

Topics: Heart, Men, Meditation, Megalomaniacs

A man's real life is that accorded to him in the thoughts of other men by reason of respect or natural love.

source: - Under Western Eyes pt. 1, ch. 1 (1911)

Topics: Love, Real, Men, Natural Love

To be a great autocrat you must be a great barbarian.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2016). “The Mirror of the Sea”, p.116, Joseph Conrad

Topics: Power, Barbarians

No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone.

source: - Heart of Darkness ch. 1 (1902)

Topics: Life, Dream, Essence, Heart Of Darkness

As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and the consistent narrowness of his outlook.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2005). “A Personal Record: Some Reminiscences”, p.19, Cosimo, Inc.

Topics: Passion, Winning, Men

Egoism , which is the moving force of the world, and altruism , which is its morality , these two contradictory instincts , of which one is so plain and the other so mysterious, cannot serve us unless in the incomprehensible alliance of their irreconcilable antagonism.

source: - Joseph Conrad “Heart of Darkness”, W. W. Norton & Company

Topics: Moving, Two, World

A task, any task, undertaken in an adventurous spirit acquires the merit of romance.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “A Personal Record”, p.87, Booklassic

Topics: Romance, Tasks, Merit, Adventurous Spirit

It occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility.

source: - Joseph Conrad “Heart of Darkness”, W. W. Norton & Company

Topics: Silence, Would Be, Speech, Futility

Going home must be like going to render an account.

source: - Joseph Conrad (1905). “Lord Jim”, p.207, McClure, Phillips & Company

Topics: Home, Literature, Accounts, Going Home, Home Home

Danger lies in the writer becoming the victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity, and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too blunt for his purpose -- as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent emotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to sniveling and giggles.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Napoleonic Novels: The Rover & Suspense: From the Renowned Author of The Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)”, p.400, e-artnow

Topics: Laughter, Lying, Exaggeration Is, Descent, Giggle

Life knows us not and we do not know life—-we don’t know even our own thoughts. Half the words we use have no meaning whatever and of the other half each man understands each word after the fashion of his own folly and conceit. Faith is a myth and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of tomorrow

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Selected Letters of Joseph Conrad”, p.89, Cambridge University Press

Topics: Fashion, Memories, Men

The vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience.

source: - Joseph Conrad (1999). “Heart of Darkness - Second Edition”, p.30, Broadview Press

Topics: Humans, Conscience

A ship in dock, surrounded by quays and the walls of warehouses, has the appearance of a prisoner meditating upon freedom in the sadness of a free spirit put under restraint.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “Under Western Eyes (Unabridged Deluxe Edition): An Intriguing Tale of Espionage and Betrayal in Czarist Russia From the Renowned Author of Heart of Darkness, Nostromo & The Secret Agent (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)”, p.475, e-artnow

Topics: Wall, Sadness, Free Spirit, Warehouse

It would take too long to explain the intimate alliance of contradictions in human nature which makes love itself wear at times the desperate shape of betrayal. And perhaps there is no possible explanation.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “Under Western Eyes (Unabridged Deluxe Edition): An Intriguing Tale of Espionage and Betrayal in Czarist Russia From the Renowned Author of Heart of Darkness, Nostromo & The Secret Agent (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)”, p.307, e-artnow

Topics: Betrayal, Long, Making Love

A nickname may be the best record of a success. That's what I call putting the face of a joke upon the body of a truth.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2016). “Nostromo”, p.241, Joseph Conrad

Topics: Records, Body, May

My task is to make you hear, feel and see. That and no more, and that is everything.

Topics: Tasks, Feels

It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp.

source: - Joseph Conrad (1905). “Lord Jim”, p.167, McClure, Phillips & Company

Topics: Stars, Loneliness, Eye, Capricious, Warmth Of The Sun

You can't breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, and at the same time keep your precarious grip on existence.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2012). “Heart of Darkness: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.53, Penguin

Topics: Sleep, Literature, Waking

Who would care to question the ground of forgiveness or compassion.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2016). “Under Western Eyes”, p.371, Joseph Conrad

Topics: Forgiveness, Compassion, Care

I sit down religiously every morning, I sit down for eight hours every day - and the sitting down is all.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Selected Letters of Joseph Conrad”, p.95, Cambridge University Press

Topics: Morning, Eight, Sitting Down

I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more /the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort /to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires /and expires, too soon, too soon /before life itself

source: - "Youth" (1902)

Topics: Love, Heart, Men, Deceitful, Triumphant

The conquest of the earth... is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only... not a sentimental pretence but an idea.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2012). “Heart of Darkness: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.7, Penguin

Topics: Ideas, Sentimental, Looks, Pretence, Heart Of Darkness

Don't you forget what's divine in the Russian soul and that's resignation.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “Under Western Eyes (Unabridged Deluxe Edition): An Intriguing Tale of Espionage and Betrayal in Czarist Russia From the Renowned Author of Heart of Darkness, Nostromo & The Secret Agent (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)”, p.18, e-artnow

Topics: Soul, Literature, Forget

Yet, when one thinks of it, diplomacy without force is a but a rotten reed to lean upon.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Complete Novels of Joseph Conrad - All 20 Works in One Premium Edition: Including Unforgettable Titles like Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, Under Western Eyes and Many More (With Author’s Letters, Memoirs and Critical Essays)”, p.3137, e-artnow

Topics: Thinking, Rotten, Reeds

Some of us, regarding the ocean with understanding and affection, have seen it looking old, as if the immemorial ages had been stirred up from the undisturbed bottom of ooze. For it is a gale of wind that makes the sea look old.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated)”, p.5273, Delphi Classics

Topics: Ocean, Wind, Sea

The artist in his calling of interpreter creates because he must. He is so much of a voice that, for him, silence is like death

source: - Joseph Conrad (2014). “Notes on Life and Letters”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Artist, Voice, Silence

Some great men owe most of their greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for their tools the exact quality of strength that matters for their work.

source: - Joseph Conrad (1905). “Lord Jim”, p.362, McClure, Phillips & Company

Topics: Business, Greatness, Men

All creative art is magic , is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising, for the edification of mankind , pinned down by the conditions of its existence to the earnest consideration of the most insignificant tides of reality .

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Complete Novels of Joseph Conrad - All 20 Works in One Premium Edition: Including Unforgettable Titles like Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, Under Western Eyes and Many More (With Author’s Letters, Memoirs and Critical Essays)”, p.4543, e-artnow

Topics: Art, Creativity, Reality, Edification

Do not talk to me of Archimedes' lever. He was an absent-minded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.

source: - Joseph Conrad “The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad”, Library of Alexandria

Topics: Moving, Giving, Imagination, Absent Minded, Right Words

Youth is insolent; it is its right - its necessity; it has got to assert itself, and all assertion in this world of doubts is a defiance, is an insolence.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Complete Novels of Joseph Conrad - All 20 Works in One Premium Edition: Including Unforgettable Titles like Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, Under Western Eyes and Many More (With Author’s Letters, Memoirs and Critical Essays)”, p.771, e-artnow

Topics: Doubt, World, Youth, Insolent, Insolence

The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2008). “Heart of Darkness and Other Tales”, OUP Oxford

Topics: Heart, Water, Darkness, Heart Of Darkness

Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put its trust in life.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “Greatest Works of Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, The Duel, Lord Jim, Victory, The Shadow-Line, The Arrow of Gold, The Secret Agent, The Nigger of the Narcissus & Under Western Eyes: Classics of World Literature from One of the Greatest English Novelists (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)”, p.670, e-artnow

Topics: Love, Life, Trust, Happy Love, Woe Is Me

We owe much to the fruitful meditation of our sages, but a sane view of life is, after all, elaborated mainly in the kitchen.

source: - Joseph Conrad, Harold Ray Stevens, J. H. Stape (2010). “Last Essays”, p.113, Cambridge University Press

Topics: Food, Views, Meditation

We are snared into doing things for which we get called names, and things for which we get hanged, and yet the spirit may well survive - survive the condemnations, survive the halter, by Jove! And there are things - they look small enough sometimes too - by which some of us are totally and completely undone.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2005). “Selected Works of Joseph Conrad”, p.37, Wordsworth Editions

Topics: Names, Looks, May

There is a kind way of assisting our fellow-creatures which is enough to break their hearts while it saves their outer envelope.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “Joseph Conrad Ultimate Collection: 18 Novels, 20+ Short Stories, Letters & Memoirs: Including Classics like Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Duel, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, Victory, The Shadow-Line & Under Western Eyes”, p.2778, e-artnow

Topics: Heart, Envelopes, Way, Assisting

This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still.

source: - Joseph Conrad (1905). “Lord Jim”, p.198, McClure, Phillips & Company

Topics: Butterfly, Men, Littles

I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make dspair pause. For in truth, we who are creatures of impulse, are creatures of despair.

source: - "Chance". Book by Joseph Conrad, part I, ch. 6, 1913.

Topics: Love, Men, Despair

And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “Heart of Darkness”, p.112, eKitap Projesi

Topics: Differences, Steps, Moments

The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “Heart of Darkness”, p.19, eKitap Projesi

Topics: Race, Rivers, Darkness, Good Service

As to honor - you know - it's a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn't theirs.

source: - Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford (1923). “Chance”

Topics: Women, Honor, Inheritance

The humblest craft that floats makes its appeal to a seaman by the faithfulness of her life.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Napoleonic Novels: The Rover & Suspense: From the Renowned Author of The Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)”, p.604, e-artnow

Topics: Sailing, Nautical, Crafts, Seamen

There are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some fable of strife to be forgotten - before the end is told - even if there happens to be any end to it.

source: - Joseph Conrad (1905). “Lord Jim”, p.31, McClure, Phillips & Company

Topics: Life, Men, Here And There, Smoking Cigars

The interior deprives men of their senses. Here, the eerie stillness of the wilderness and the darkness of night render the men both deaf and blind. Without eyes or ears, they have no frame of reference-and without a frame of reference, they have no clear identities.

Topics: Eye, Night, Men, Darkness Of Night, Frame Of Reference

The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2013). “Some Reminicscences”, p.8, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Ideas, Revolution, Spirit, Scruples

There is, as every schoolboy knows in this scientific age, a very close chemical relation between coal and diamonds. It is the reason, I believe, why some people allude to coal as "black diamonds." Both these commodities represent wealth; but coal is a much less portable form of property.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2016). “Victory”, Joseph Conrad

Topics: Book, Believe, People, Black Diamonds

The good author is he who contemplates without marked joy or excessive sorrow the adventures of his soul amongst criticisms.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2005). “A Personal Record: Some Reminiscences”, p.109, Cosimo, Inc.

Topics: Adventure, Joy, Soul, Good Authors

A historian may be an artist too, and a novelist is a historian, the preserver, the keeper, the expounder, of human experience.

source: - Joseph Conrad “Heart of Darkness”, W. W. Norton & Company

Topics: Artist, May, Novelists

Ah! These commercial interests -- spoiling the finest life under the sun. Why must the sea be used for trade -- and for war as well?...It would have been so much nicer just to sail about, with here and there a port and a bit of land to stretch one's legs on, buy a few books and get a change of cooking for a while.

source: - Joseph Conrad (2015). “Joseph Conrad’s Sea Tales - Premium Collection: An Outcast of the Islands, The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’, A Smile of Fortune, Typhoon and more: Classics of World Literature from One of the Greatest English Novelists (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)”, p.301, e-artnow

Topics: War, Book, Sea