Joseph Conrad Quotes & Sayings

Who knows what true happiness is, not the conventional word.. but the naked terror. To the lonely themselves, that wears a mask, the most miserable outcast hugs some memory.. or some illusion. — Joseph Conrad

A fool has more ideas than a wise man can foresee. — Joseph Conrad

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

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

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. — Joseph Conrad

Don't you know what the police are for, Stevie? They are there so that them as have nothing shouldn't take anything away from them who have. — Joseph Conrad

The artist in his calling of interpreter creates because he must. He is so much of a voice that, for him, silence is like death — Joseph Conrad

There are things you find nothing about in books — Joseph Conrad

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

I remember my youth ... the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men. — Joseph Conrad

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

Perhaps on some quiet night the tremor of far-off drums, sinking, swelling, a tremor vast, faint; a sound weird, appealing, suggestive and wild - and perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country. — Joseph Conrad

The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement
but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims. — Joseph Conrad

And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men. — Joseph Conrad

As to honor - you know - it's a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn't theirs. — Joseph Conrad

Curiosity being one of the forms of self-revelation, a systematically incurious person remains always partly mysterious. — Joseph Conrad

Does the price matter, if the trick be well done? You do your tricks very well. And I didn't do badly either, since I managed not to sink that steamboat on my first trip. It's a wonder to me yet. Imagine a blindfolded man set to — Joseph Conrad

He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. — Joseph Conrad

Liberty of imagination should be the most precious possession of a novelist. To try voluntarily to discover the fettering dogmas of its own inspiration, is a trick worthy of humna perverseness which, after inventing an absurdity, endeavours to find for it a pedigree of distinguished ancestors ... — Joseph Conrad

Egoism , which is the moving force of the world, and altruism , which is its morality , these two contradictory instincts , of which one is so plain and the other so mysterious, cannot serve us unless in the incomprehensible alliance of their irreconcilable antagonism. — Joseph Conrad

There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea. — Joseph Conrad

Art itself my be defined as a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe. — Joseph Conrad

There are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some fable of strife to be forgotten - before the end is told - even if there happens to be any end to it. — Joseph Conrad

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. — Joseph Conrad

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 I have left out the mere rogues. The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement - but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims: the victims of disgust, of disenchantment - often of remorse. Hopes grotesquely betrayed, ideals caricatured - that is the definition of revolutionary success. There have been in every revolution hearts broken by such successes. But enough of that. My meaning is that I don't want you to be a victim. — Joseph Conrad

Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted. — Joseph Conrad

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions. Only in the conduct of our action can we find the sense of mastery over the Fates. — Joseph Conrad

It was rather like a forced-on numbness of spirit. The long, long stress of a gale does it; the suspense of the interminably culminating catastrophe; and there is a bodily fatigue in the mere holding on to existence within the excessive tumult; a searching and insidious fatigue that penetrates deep into a man's breast to cast down and sadden his heart, which is incorrigible, and of all the gifts of the earth - even before life itself - aspires to peace. — Joseph Conrad

Mistah Kurtz--he dead. — Joseph Conrad

Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time. — Joseph Conrad

Never test another man by your own weakness. — Joseph Conrad

Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put it's trust in life! — Joseph Conrad

But there is an unholy fascination in systematic noise. He did not flee from it incontinently, as one might have expected him to do. He remained, astonished at himself for remaining, since nothing could have been more repulsive to his tastes, more painful to his senses, and, so to speak, more contrary to his genius, than this rude exhibition of vigour. The Zangiacomo band was not making music; it was simply murdering silence with a vulgar, ferocious energy. One felt as if witnessing a deed of violence; and that impression was so strong that it seemed marvelous to see the people sitting so quietly on their chairs, drinking so calmly out of their glasses, and giving no signs of distress, anger, or fear. Heyst averted his gaze from the unnatural spectacle of their indifference. — Joseph Conrad

The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine. — Joseph Conrad

Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded — Joseph Conrad

I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more /the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort /to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires /and expires, too soon, too soon /before life itself — Joseph Conrad

Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place- whether to be like this is your loss or your gain I won't pretend to say. — Joseph Conrad

And Heyst, the son, read:
Of the stratagems of life the most cruel is the consolation of love - the most subtle, too; for the desire is the bed of dreams. — Joseph Conrad

He looked upon the immortal sea with the awakened and groping perception of its heartless might; he saw it unchanged, black and foaming under the eternal scrutiny of the stars; he heard its impatient voice calling for him out of a pitiless vastness full of unrest, turmoil, and of terror. He looked afar upon it, and he saw an immensity tortured and blind, moaning and furious, that claimed all the days of his tenacious life, and, when life was over, would claim the worn-out body of its slave... — Joseph Conrad

It was another of Nostromo's triumphs, the greatest, the most enviable, the most sinister of all. In that true cry of undying passion that seemed to ring aloud from Punta Mala to Azuera and away to the bright line of the horizon, overhung by a big white cloud shining like a mass of solid silver, the genius of the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores dominated the dark gulf containing his conquests of treasure and love. — Joseph Conrad

Often far away there I thought of these two, guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool as for a warm pall, one introducing, introducing continuously to the unknown, the other scrutinizing the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes. Ave! Old knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant. Not many of those she looked at ever saw her again
not half, by a long way. — Joseph Conrad

The value of a sentence is the personality that utters't, for nothing new can be said by any man or woman. — Joseph Conrad

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. — Joseph Conrad

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. — Joseph Conrad

You see we had on the whole liked him well enough. And liking is not sufficient to keep going the interest one takes in a human being. With hatred, apparently, it is otherwise. — Joseph Conrad

In the time of Spanish rule, and for many years afterwards, the town of Sulaco
the luxuriant beauty of the orange gardens bears witness to its antiquity
had never been commercially anything more important than a coasting port with a fairly large local trade in ox-hides and indigo. — Joseph Conrad

But sometimes, by the deserving and the fortunate, even that task is accomplished. And when it is accomplished - behold! - all the truth of life is there: a moment of vision, a sigh, a smile - and the return to an eternal rest. — Joseph Conrad

It is a fact that the bitterest contradictions and the deadliest conflicts of the world are carried on in every individual breast capable of feeling and passion. [An anarchist] — Joseph Conrad

But when one is young one must see things, gather experience, ideas; enlarge the mind. — Joseph Conrad

I said; 'his example too. Yes, his example. I forgot that.' 'But I do not. I cannot - I — Joseph Conrad

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 that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp. — Joseph Conrad

It was a wonderful experience. She mistrusted his very slumbers
and she seemed to think I could tell her why! Thus a poor mortal seduced by the charm of an apparition might have tried to wring from another ghost the tremendous secret of the claim the other world holds over a disembodied soul astray amongst the passions of this earth. The very ground on which I stood seemed to melt under my feet. And it was so simple too; but if the spirits evoked by our fears and our unrest have ever to vouch for each other's constancy before the forlorn magicians that we are, then I
I alone of us dwellers in the flesh
have shuddered in the hopeless chill of such a task. — Joseph Conrad

Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praiseworthy sincerity which, while it delivers one into the hands of one's enemies, is as likely as not to embroil one with one's friends. — Joseph Conrad

An author writes only half the book. The rest is written by readers. — Joseph Conrad

No influential friend would have served me better. She [the steamboat] had given me a chance to come out a bit-to find out what I could do. 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 can never tell what it really means. — Joseph Conrad

I thought his memory was like the other memories of the dead that accumulate in every man's life, - a vague impress on the brain of shadows that had fallen on it in their swift and final passage ... — Joseph Conrad

All that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. — Joseph Conrad

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. — Joseph Conrad

The audacity of youth reckons upon what it fancies an unlimited time at its disposal; but a millionaire has unlimited means in his hand - which is better. One's time on earth is an uncertain quantity, but about the long reach of millions there is no doubt. — Joseph Conrad

Books may be written in all sorts of places. Verbal inspiration may enter the berth of a mariner on board a ship frozen fast in a river in the middle of a town. — Joseph Conrad

His hair in falling seemed to have stuck to his chin, and had prospered in the new locality, for his beard hung down to his waist. — Joseph Conrad

You take a different view of your actions when you come to understand, when you are made to understand every day that your existence is necessary - you see, absolutely necessary - to another person. — Joseph Conrad

My task 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. — Joseph Conrad

You, too!" it seemed to say, "you, too, shall taste of that peace
and that unrest in a searching intimacy with your own self -
obscure as we were and as supreme in the face of all the winds and
all the seas, in an immensity that receives no impress, preserves
no memories, and keeps no reckoning of lives. — Joseph Conrad

Follow your bliss. Find where it is and don't be afraid to follow it. — Joseph Conrad

To cut oneself entirely from one's kind is impossible. To live in a desert one must be a saint. — Joseph Conrad

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 - — Joseph Conrad

wax and seemed dumbfounded by the accident. Next thing he wanted to know 'how long it would take to' . . . I interrupted him again. Being hungry, you know, and kept on my feet too, I was getting savage. 'How could I tell,' I said. 'I hadn't even seen the wreck yet - some months, no doubt.' All this talk seemed to me so futile. 'Some months,' he said. 'Well, let us say three months before we can make a start. Yes. That ought to do the affair.' I flung out of his hut (he lived all alone in a clay hut with a sort of veranda) muttering to — Joseph Conrad

Ah! These commercial interests
spoiling the finest life under the sun. Why must the sea be used for trade
and for war as well? ... It would have been so much nicer just to sail about, with here and there a port and a bit of land to stretch one's legs on, buy a few books and get a change of cooking for a while. — Joseph Conrad

The end (goal) of art is to figure the hidden meaning of things and not their appearance; for in this profound truth lies their true reality, which does not appear in their external outlines. — Joseph Conrad

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

All this life, must be life, since it is so much like a dream. — Joseph Conrad

I ask myself whether his rush had really carried him out of that mist in which he loomed interesting if not very big, with floating outlines - a straggler yearning inconsolably for his humble place in the ranks. And besides, the last word is not said, - probably shall never be said. Are not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention? ... There is never time to say our last word - the last word of our love, of our desire, faith, remorse, submissions, revolt.
... My last words about Jim shall be few. I affirmed that he achieved greatness. — Joseph Conrad

If it be true that every novel contains an element of autobiography - and this can hardly be denied, since the creator can only express himself in his creation - then there are some of us to whom an open display of sentiment is repugnant. — Joseph Conrad

On the floor of a lofty portico. It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing, that feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy beetle crawled on - which was just what you wanted it to do. Where the pilgrims imagined it crawled to I don't know. To some place where they expected to get something, — Joseph Conrad

The desire to make the horse happy and the cabman happy, had reached the point of a bizarre longing to take them to bed with him. And that, he knew, was impossible. For Stevie was not mad. It was, as it were, a symbolic longing; and at the same time it was very distinct, because springing from experience, the mother of wisdom. Thus when as a child he cowered in a dark corner scared, wretched, sore, and miserable with the black, black misery of the soul, his sister Winnie used to come along, and carry him off to bed with her, as into a heaven of consoling peace. Stevie, though apt to forget mere facts, such as his name and address for instance, had a faithful memory of sensations. To be taken into a bed of compassion was the supreme remedy, with the only one disadvantage of being difficult of application on a large scale. And looking at the cabman, Stevie perceived this clearly, because he was reasonable. — Joseph Conrad

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

The beauty of the loved woman exists in the beauties of Nature. — Joseph Conrad

Protection is the first necessity of opulence and luxury — Joseph Conrad

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 strangeness. But when that being, parting with — Joseph Conrad

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. — Joseph Conrad

When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate those savages
hate them to the death. — Joseph Conrad

One moment and bright the next. When the manager, escorted by the pilgrims, all of them armed to the teeth, had gone to the house, this chap came on board. 'I say, I don't like this. These natives are in the bush,' I said. He assured me earnestly it was all right. 'They are simple — Joseph Conrad

It was a dark story. — Joseph Conrad

A train of thought is never false. The falsehood lies deep in the necessities of existence. — Joseph Conrad

You perceive the force of a word. He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense ... Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world. — Joseph Conrad

Light came out of this river since - you say Knights? Yes, but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker - may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! — Joseph Conrad

On his first visit on shore piloting him firmly but without ostentation to a vast, cavern-like shop which is full of things that are eaten and — Joseph Conrad

brain as a shadow passes away upon a white screen. She lives in the cottage and works for Miss Swaffer. She is Amy Foster for everybody, and the child is 'Amy Foster's boy.' She calls him Johnny - which means Little John. "It is impossible to say whether this name recalls anything to her. Does she ever think of the past? I have seen her hanging over the boy's cot in a — Joseph Conrad

Even extreme grief may ultimately vent
itself in violence
but more generally takes the form of apathy — Joseph Conrad

Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. — Joseph Conrad

Admiration was a sentiment unknown to her - first, as always more or less tainted with mediocrity, and next, as being in a way an admission of inferiority. And both were frankly inconceivable to her nature. — Joseph Conrad

If we could only get rid of consciousness. What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it. To be part of the animal kingdom under the conditions of this earth is very well
but as soon as you know of your slavery, the pain, the anger, the strife
the tragedy begins. We can't return to nature, since we can't change our place in it. Our refuge is in stupidity [ ... ] There is no morality, no knowledge, and no hope; there is only the consciousness of ourselves which drives us about a world that [ ... ] is always but a vain and floating appearance. — Joseph Conrad

She was engaged in the task of defending her position in life," said Heyst. "It's a very respectable task. — Joseph Conrad

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. — Joseph Conrad

It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares. — Joseph Conrad

Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror
of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision
he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:
The horror! The horror! — Joseph Conrad

Dreams are madness, my dear. It's things that happen in the waking world, while one is asleep, that one would be glad to know the meaning of. — Joseph Conrad

A modern fleet of ships does not so much make use of the sea as exploit a highway. — Joseph Conrad

The unwholesome-looking little moral agent of destruction exulted silently in the possession of personal prestige, keeping in check this man armed with the defensive mandate of a menaced society. More fortunate than Caligula, who wished that the Roman Senate had only one head for the better satisfaction of his cruel lust, he beheld in that one man all the forces he had set at defiance: the force of law, property, oppression, and injustice. He beheld all his enemies and fearlessly confronted them all in a supreme satisfaction of his vanity. They stood perplexed before him as if before a dreadful portent. He gloated inwardly over the chance of this meeting affirming his superiority over all the multitude of mankind. — Joseph Conrad