Joseph Conrad Quotations

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

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

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

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.

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.

Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham.

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

Going home must be like going to render an account.

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.

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

For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed for it, for all the celebrations it has been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.

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.

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.

They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

It is a maudlin and indecent verity that comes out through the strength of wine.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin.

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.

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.

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

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.

How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a specter through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?

An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I had ambition not only to go farther than any man had ever been before, but as far as it was possible for a man to go.

A modern fleet of ships does not so much make use of the sea as exploit a highway.

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.

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.

Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praiseworthy sincerity which, while it delivers one into the hands of one's enemies, is as likely as not to embroil one with one's friends.

I dare say I am compelled, unconsciously compelled, now to write volume after volume, as in past years I was compelled to go to sea, voyage after voyage. Leaves must follow upon each other as leagues used to follow in the days gone by, on and on to the appointed end, which, being truth itself, is one -- one for all men and for all occupations.

He remembered that she was pretty, and, more, that she had a special grace in the intimacy of life. She had the secret of individuality which excites--and escapes.

He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it!

Remember, Razumov, that women, children, and revolutionists hate irony, which is the negation of all saving instincts, of all faith, of all devotion, of all action.

It is not Justice the servant of men, but accident, hazard, Fortune--the ally of patient Time--that holds an even and scrupulous balance.

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.

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

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

What all men are really after is some form, or perhaps only some formula, of peace.

Between the conception and the creation between the emotion and the response Falls the shadow

Between the conception and the creationbetween the emotion and the responseFalls the shadow

Don't talk to me of your Archimedes' lever. He was an absentminded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.

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

The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits.

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

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

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward upon the miseries and credulities of mankind

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

The revolutionary spirit is mightily convenient in this: that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas

This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak.

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.

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

In plucking the fruit of memory one runs the risk of spoiling its bloom

His eyes were naturally heavy; he had an air of having wallowed, fully dressed, all day on an unmade bed.

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.

The future is of our own making - and the most striking characteristic of the century is just that development

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

It is respectable to have illusions - and safe - and profitable, and dull

Above all, we must forgive the unhappy souls who have elected to make the pilgrimage on foot, who skirt the shore and look uncomprehendingly upon the horror of the struggle, the joy of victory, the profound hopelessness of the vanquished

I don't like work no man does but I like what is in the work the chance to find yourself

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted.

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.

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

The blight of futility that lies in wait for men's speeches had fallen upon our conversation and made it a thing of empty sounds.