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56ea76a
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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.
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Joseph Conrad |
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8cab45e
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And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."
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darkness
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Joseph Conrad |
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aad4ad5
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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.
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Joseph Conrad |
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5cd28a0
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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 much.
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Joseph Conrad |
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0cc90d0
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No, I don't like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don't like work - no man does - but I like what is in the work, - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality - for yourself, not for others - what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.
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Joseph Conrad |
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f221d68
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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.
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Joseph Conrad |
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4fcba95
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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 t..
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Joseph Conrad |
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68481e6
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All my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and, however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part. The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is--marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in w..
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Joseph Conrad |
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f6eb56d
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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.
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Joseph Conrad |
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346b03c
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I think the knowledge came to him at last -- only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. 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. Anything approaching the change that came over ..
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Joseph Conrad |
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ffd7cbb
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Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes.
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Joseph Conrad |
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4310232
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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."
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Joseph Conrad |
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11ea5f7
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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.
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Joseph Conrad |
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1665e19
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His face was like the autumn sky, overcast one moment and bright the next.
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Joseph Conrad |
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6e2cccb
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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.
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fiction
marlow
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Joseph Conrad |
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6986b53
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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.
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Joseph Conrad |
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d792c94
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I saw him open his mouth wide. . . as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him.
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Joseph Conrad |
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ec81561
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These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness. Of course you may be too much of a fool to go wrong--too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of darkness. I take it no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil. The fool is too much of a fool or the devil too much of a devil--I don't know which. Or yo..
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Joseph Conrad |
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1de4eb6
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Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.
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Joseph Conrad |
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1a8e2c6
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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. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it, not a sentimental pretence but an idea: and an unselfish belief in the idea--something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to...
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Joseph Conrad |
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67dbc0d
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And from right to left along the lighted shore moved a wild and gorgeous apparition of a woman. She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable neckla..
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Joseph Conrad |
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db3b234
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How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?
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mind
hate
courage
fear
hope
men-s-heart
self-loathing
fright
mystery
fight
mental-illness
torture
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Joseph Conrad |
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af0a3b2
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for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence...
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Joseph Conrad |
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e0cea9a
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All that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men.
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Joseph Conrad |
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33e4cf1
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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.
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Joseph Conrad |
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b74d6aa
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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 -- h..
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mourning
time
sorrow
death
devotion
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Joseph Conrad |
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af6b953
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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.
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Joseph Conrad |
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090c737
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Everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places.
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Joseph Conrad |
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ef8a1ee
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A writing may be lost; a lie may be written; but what the eye has seen is truth and remains in the mind!
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writing
reality
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Joseph Conrad |
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89424ae
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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. Nevertheless, there can be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening when we see, hear, understand ever so much--everything--in a flash--before we fall back again i..
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Joseph Conrad |
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c0cb8b5
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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.
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Joseph Conrad |
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7d05a43
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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.
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Joseph Conrad |
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390fcc5
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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.
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Joseph Conrad |
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8364ab2
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Well, you know that was the worst of it - this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity - like yours - the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was justly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faint..
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Joseph Conrad |
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4174b54
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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.
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nature
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Joseph Conrad |
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801775b
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I am afraid that if you want to go down into history you'll have to do something for it.
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Joseph Conrad |
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60a0eeb
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Men act badly sometimes without being much worse than others,
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Joseph Conrad |
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5f7bfd1
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It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.
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Joseph Conrad |
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96f11bf
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And after all, one does not die of it." "Die of what?" I asked swiftly. "Of being afraid."
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Joseph Conrad |
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1931d52
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I suppose everybody must be always just a little homesick.
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Joseph Conrad |
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314226f
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Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put it's trust in life!
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Joseph Conrad |
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0a4ae51
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There is no peace and no rest in the development of material interests. They have their law, and their justice. But it is founded on expediency, and is inhuman; it is without rectitude, without the continuity and the force that can be found only in a moral principle.
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Joseph Conrad |
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209b078
|
O youth! The strenght of it, the faith of it, the imagination of it! (...) I think of her with pleasure, with affection, with regret - as you would think of some one dead you have loved. I shall never forget her.... Pass the bottle.
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Joseph Conrad |
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f5ae4f5
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No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don't you know the devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black thoughts, its sombre and brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man all is inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It's really easier to f..
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Joseph Conrad |