Joseph Conrad Quotations | Page 2

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

God is for men, and religion for women.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

The mind of man is capable of anything.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness

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.

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

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.

We can never cease to be ourselves.

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

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.

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.

Let a fool be made serviceable according to his folly.

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.

Reality, as usual, beats fiction out of sight.

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

All a man can betray is his conscience.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

I remember my youth... the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men.

There is something haunting in the light of the moon.

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.

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.

Violence is not a catalyst but a diversion.

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.

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!

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

There is a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride, beyond mere skill, almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art - which is art.

A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea.

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.

Protection is the first necessity of opulence and luxury.

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

The world of finance is a mysterious world in which, incredible as the fact may appear, evaporation precedes liquidation.

The air of the New World seems favorable to the art of declamation.

For the great mass of mankind the only saving grace that is needed is steady fidelity to what is nearest to hand and heart in the short moment of each human effort.

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 .

[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.

I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more

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.

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

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

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

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

Lights of ships moved in the fairway-a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.

I can't imagine a human being so hard up for something to do as to quarrel with me.

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.

Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing.

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

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

The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come and wait for the turn of the tide.

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. I have been for many years a teacher of languages. It is an occupation which at length becomes fatal to whatever share of imagination, observation, and insight an ordinary person may be heir to. 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.

He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is detestable. And it has a fascination, too, which goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination--you know.

Of all the inanimate objects, of all men's creations, books are the nearest to us for they contain our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to the truth, and our persistent leanings to error. But most of all they resemble us in their precious hold on life.

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.

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.

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

It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...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...

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.

The vision seemed to enter the house with me-the stretcher, the phantom-bearers, the wild crowd of obedient worshippers, the gloom of the forests, the glitter of the reach between the murky bends, the beat of the drum, regular and muffled like the beating of a heart-the heart of a conquering darkness.

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

We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs forever, but in the august light of abiding memories.

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

I have been called romantic. Well, that can't be helped. But stay. I seem to remember that I have been called a realist also. And as that charge too can be made out, let us try to live up to it, at whatever cost, for a change.

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

I am a great foe of favoritism in public life, in private life, and even in the delicate relationship of an author to his works.

Books may be written in all sorts of places. Verbal inspiration may enter the berth of a mariner on board a ship frozen fast in a river in the middle of a town.

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

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