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A Departure, the last professional sight of land, is always good, or at least good enough. For, even if the weather be thick, it does not matter much to a ship having all the open sea before her bows.
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Joseph Conrad |
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Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga--perhaps too much dice, you know--coming out here in the train of some prefect, or tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and 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 eit..
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Joseph Conrad |
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All the pilgrims rushed out to see. I remained, and went on with my dinner. I believe I was considered brutally callous. However, I did not eat much.
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Joseph Conrad |
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There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that 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.
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Joseph Conrad |
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The six stories in this volume are the result of some three or four years of occasional work. The dates of their writing are far apart, their origins are various. None of them are connected directly with personal experiences. In all of them the facts are inherently true, by which I mean that they are not only possible but that they have actually happened.
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Joseph Conrad |
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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 ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which..
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Joseph Conrad |
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hot-tempered, but the sight of some nondescript and miry creature sitting cross-legged amongst a lot of loose straw, and swinging itself to and fro like a bear in a cage, made him pause. Then this tramp stood up silently before him, one mass of mud and filth from head to foot. Smith, alone amongst his stacks with this apparition, in the stormy twilight ringing with the infuriated barking of the dog, felt the dread of an inexplicable strange..
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Joseph Conrad |
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Running all over the sea trying to get behind the weather.
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Joseph Conrad |
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The sea never changes and its works, for all the talk of men, are wrapped in mystery.
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Joseph Conrad |
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Facing it -- always facing it -- that's the way to get through.
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Joseph Conrad |
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Reality, as usual, beats fiction out of sight.
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Joseph Conrad |
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In plucking the fruit of memory one runs the risk of spoiling its bloom.
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Joseph Conrad |
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A man is a worker. If he is not that he is nothing.
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Joseph Conrad |
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This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak.
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Joseph Conrad |
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God for men -- religions for women," he muttered sometimes.
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Joseph Conrad |
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e4487ab
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Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.
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Joseph Conrad |
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The air of the New World seems favorable to the art of declamation.
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Joseph Conrad |
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886d2b5
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Protection is the first necessity of opulence and luxury.
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Joseph Conrad |
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I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.
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Joseph Conrad |
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A man's most open actions have a secret side to them.
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Joseph Conrad |
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a3a916f
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Let a fool be made serviceable according to his folly.
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Joseph Conrad |
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7ef42d8
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Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear.
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Joseph Conrad |