Joseph Conrad Quotes

I had turned away from the picture and was going back to the world where events move, men change, light flickers, life flows in a clear stream, no matter whether over mud or over stones.

Are not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention?

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

I don't think a single one of them had any clear idea of time, as we at the end of countless ages have. They still belonged to the beginnings of time—

I remembered the old doctor, - "It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot." I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting.

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

Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.

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.

It was a dark story.

This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompaniment to my meditations.

The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future.

The man up there raged aloud in two languages, and with a sincerity in his fury that almost convinced me I had, in some way, sinned against the harmony of the universe

He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a featherhat, walking on his hind legs.

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.

Over the lives borne from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness.

It was not my strength that wanted nursing, it was my imagination that wanted soothing.

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.

There is a weird power in a spoken word.

We live as we dream--alone....

She had said he had been driven away from her by a dream...

I wondered how far I should turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one's own personality every man sets up for himself secretly.

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

His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines.

He remembered that she was pretty, and, more, that she had a special grace in the intimacy of life. She had the secret of individuality which excites and escapes.

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

He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything?

I would just as soon have abused the old village church at home for not being a cathedral.

The conquest of the earth is not a pretty thing.

And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets.

Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire.

The sun was fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip with steam.

The sea, perhaps because of its saltiness, roughens the outside but keeps sweet the kernel of its servants' soul.

And yet I have known the sea too long to believe in its respect for decency. An elemental force is ruthlessly frank

History repeats itself but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.

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

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

How does one kill fear I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart slash off its spectral head take it by the spectral throat?

Who would care to question the ground of forgiveness or compassion?

You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.

As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices.

Happiness happiness ... the flavor is with you-with you alone and you can make it as intoxicating as you please.

Caricature: putting the face of a joke upon the body of a truth.

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.

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.

How does one kill fear? ... How do you shoot a specter through the heart slash off its spectral head take it by its spectral throat?

No man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.

Felicity felicity ... is quaffed out of a golden cup ... the flavour is with you alone and you can make it as intoxicating as you please.

The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it all the past as well as all the future.

I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more - the feeling that I could last forever outlast the sea the earth and all men.

this grimy fragment of another world, the forerunner of change, of conquest, of trade, of massacres, of blessings....the merry dance of death and trade goes on