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bc8a730
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No eloquence could have been so withering to one's belief in mankind as his final burst of sincerity.
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Joseph Conrad |
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348c2f0
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but in the great demoralization of the land he kept up his appearance. That's backbone.
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Joseph Conrad |
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e128790
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doomed to be the recipient of confidences...
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Joseph Conrad |
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92d79a0
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A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind wagged to and fro like tails. I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, a..
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Joseph Conrad |
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4a3f58b
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as i emerge on deck the ordered arrangement of the stars meets my eye, unclouded, infinitely wearisome. There they are: stars, sun, sea, light, darkness, space, great waters; the formidable Work of the Seven Days, into which mankind seems to have blundered unbidden. Or else decoyed.
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Joseph Conrad |
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ab75f0c
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Had he been informed by an indisputable authority that the end of the world was to be finally accomplished by a catastrophic disturbance of the atmosphere, he would have assimilated the information under the simple idea of dirty weather, and no other, because he had no experience of cataclysms, and belief does not necessarily imply comprehension.
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Joseph Conrad |
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c1294df
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The edge of a colossal jungle, so dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with white surf, ran straight, like a ruled line, far, far, away along blue sea whose glitter was blurred by a creeping mist.
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Joseph Conrad |
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94d18f8
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He had entered by then the broad, human path of inconsistencies.
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Joseph Conrad |
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6a864ae
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The men we met walked past, slow, unsmiling, with downcast eyes, as if the melancholy of a over-burdened earth had weighted their feet, bowed their shoulders, borne down their glances
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Joseph Conrad |
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4e58fef
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The islands are very quiet. One sees them lying about, clothed in their dark garments of leaves, in a great hush of silver and azure, where the sea without murmurs meets the sky in a ring of magic stillness.
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Joseph Conrad |
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23f1575
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In life, you see, there is not much choice. You have either to rot or to burn. And there is not one of us, painted or unpainted, that would not rather burn than rot.
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Joseph Conrad |
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aaa9406
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Napoleon I., whose career had the quality of a duel against the whole of Europe, disliked duelling between the officers of his army. The great military emperor was not a washbuckler, and had little respect for tradition. Nevertheless, a story of duelling, which became a legend in the army, runs through the epic of imperial wars. To the surprise and admiration of their fellows, two officers, like insane artists trying to gild refined gold or..
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napoleon
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Joseph Conrad |
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d0bdae8
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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 nec..
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Joseph Conrad |
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dcbfe84
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Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He had summed it up - he had judged. "The horror!"
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Joseph Conrad |
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fbcbee5
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Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted.
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Joseph Conrad |
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ff61bba
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It was a dark story.
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marriage
dark
death
short
kidnapping
pirate
theft
ominous
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Joseph Conrad |
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f11f30d
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She had said he had been driven away from her by a dream,--and there was no answer one could make her--there seemed to be no forgiveness for such a transgression. And yet is not mankind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive devotion. And what is the pursuit of truth, after all?
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mankind
humanity
fear
truth
ambitious-minds
ambitious-people
driven
idlesness
self-motivated
haunted
human-condition
grace
self-loathing
self-hate
fall
fire
pride
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Joseph Conrad |
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667461c
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All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell, since I am trying to interpret for you into slow speech the instantaneous effect of visual impressions.
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writer
love
overly-descriptive
retell
retold
show-and-tell
boring
exposition
witness
explanation
testimony
why
retelling
description
creativity
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Joseph Conrad |
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ad3317c
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And because you not always can keep your eyes shut there comes the real trouble--the heart pain--the world pain. I tell you, my friend, it is not good for you to find you cannot make your dream come true, for the reason that you not strong enough are, or not clever enough. . . . Ja! . . . And all the time you are such a fine fellow too! Wie? Was? Gott im Himmel! How can that be? Ha! ha! ha!" 'The shadow prowling amongst the graves of butt..
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broken-dreams
broken-spirit
heart-pain
lost-souls
heartache
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Joseph Conrad |
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5ad13e2
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The fault of this country is the want of measure in political life. Flat acquiescence in illegality, followed by sanguinary reaction--that, senores, is not the way to a stable and prosperous future.
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Joseph Conrad |
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3b35fde
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And there's another thing: a man should stand up to his bad luck, to his mistakes, to his conscience and all that sort of thing. Why--what else would you have to fight against.
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Joseph Conrad |
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f0efa10
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They believed their words. Everybody shows a respectful deference to certain sounds that he and his fellows can make. But about feelings people really know nothing. We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know nothing real beyond the words. Nobody knows what suffering or sacrifice mean- except, perhaps the victims of the mysterious purpose of these illusions.
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Joseph Conrad |
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43638bf
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He was little more than a voice. And I heard-him-it-this voice-other voices-all of them were so little more than voices-and the memory of that time itself lingers around me, impalpable, like a dying vibration of one immense jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean, without any kind of sense.
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Joseph Conrad |
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d3399a6
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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.
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writing
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Joseph Conrad |
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86affc1
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No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where the hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in the 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 his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It's really easie..
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starvation
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Joseph Conrad |
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e4d38f6
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The beauty of the loved woman exists in the beauties of Nature.
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Joseph Conrad |
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84ae607
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I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.
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Joseph Conrad |
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268a147
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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. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretence, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their..
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near-death-experience
life-changing
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Joseph Conrad |
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80465f3
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Yes, the sound of water, the voice of the wind - completely foreign to human passions. All the other sounds of this earth brought contamination to the solitude of a soul.
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Joseph Conrad |
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2808c65
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This was the unbounded power of eloquence--of words--of burning noble words. There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases, unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash ..
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Joseph Conrad |
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1c3e4d9
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Thus ended the first and adventurous part of his existence. What followed was so different that, but for the reality of sorrow which remained with him, this strange part must have resembled a dream.
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pain
grief
past
change-of-scene
changes-in-life
loss-of-love
grit
rebirth
heartache
new
old
life-after-death
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Joseph Conrad |
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cb36098
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The last thing I want to tell you is this: in a real revolution--not a simple dynastic change or a mere reform of institutions--in a real revolution the best characters do not come to the front. A violent revolution falls into the hands of narrow-minded fanatics and of tyrannical hypocrites at first. Afterwards comes the turn of all the pretentious intellectual failures of the time. Such are the chiefs and the leaders. You will notice that ..
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Joseph Conrad |
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65e4902
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They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything!
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joseph-conrad
lord-jim
modernist
modernism
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Joseph Conrad |
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4c3a1ca
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Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long six-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there..
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Joseph Conrad |
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f2a813b
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Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions.
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necessity
invention
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Joseph Conrad |
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66f48fe
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A man may destroy everything within himself, love and hate and belief, and even doubt; but as long as he clings to life he cannot destroy fear: the fear, subtle, indestructible, and terrible, that pervades his being; that tinges his thoughts; that lurks in his heart; that watches on his lips the struggle of his last breath.
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Joseph Conrad |
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8c24234
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A fool, what with sheer fright and fine sentiments, is always safe.
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Joseph Conrad |
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488ff07
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Thinking is the great enemy of perfection. The habit of profound reflection, I am compelled to say, is the most pernicious of all the habits formed by the civilized man.
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Joseph Conrad |
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d5555e8
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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.
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Joseph Conrad |
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f109ad0
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He seemed to hasten the retreat of departing light by his very presence; the setting sun dipped sharply, as though fleeing before our nigger; a black mist emanated from him; a subtle and dismal influence; a something cold and gloomy that floated out and settled on all the faces like a mourning veil. The circle broke up. The joy of laughter died on stiffened lips.
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racism
race-relations
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Joseph Conrad |
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4580a9b
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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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c41e2c3
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hych trsy dr brbr grsngy tb nmyawrd, hych Sbry an r z byn nmybrd, jyy hm khh grsngy bshd, nfrt mwj myznd.
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Joseph Conrad |
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df38fd9
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We could not understand, because we were too far and could not remember,
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Joseph Conrad |
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23c18e8
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Everything belonged to him--but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.
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Joseph Conrad |