Joseph Conrad Quotes

She feared the unknown as we all do, and her ignorance made the unknown infinitely vast.

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

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.

The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.

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

Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing.

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?

I suppose everybody must be always just a little homesick.

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.

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.

Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall.

And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth.

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.

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

Going home must be like going to render an account.

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

Never test another man by your own weakness.

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.

In some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him--all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. 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. Imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate.

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.

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

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

The ocean has the conscienceless temper of a savage autocrat spoiled by much adulation

The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of Westerly Weather, is an impassive-faced tyrant with a sharp poniard held behind his back for a treacherous stab.

For there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence.

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!

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.

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.

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

He hated all this, and somehow he couldn't get away.

The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealth, the germs of empires.

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

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

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

We couldn't understand because we were too far... and could not remember because we were traveling in the night of first ages, those ages that had gone, leaving hardly a sign... and no memories.

Society was calling to its accomplished child to come, to be taken care of, to be instructed, to be judged, to be condemned; it called him to return to that rubbish heap from which he had wandered away, so that justice could be done.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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