Conrad Joseph Quotes & Sayings

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

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

The ocean has the conscienceless temper of a savage autocrat spoiled by much adulation — 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

Felicity, felicity - how shall I say it? - is quaffed out of a golden cup in every latitude: the flavour is with you - with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you please. — Joseph Conrad

It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose. — Joseph Conrad

My weakness consists in not having a discriminating eye for the incidental
for the externals,
no eye for the hod of the rag-picker or the fine linen of the next mean. Next man
that's it. I have met so many men." he pursued, with momentary sadness
"met them too with a certain, certain impact, let us say; like this fellow, for instance
and in each case all I could see was merely a human being. A confounded democratic quality of vision which may be better than total blindness, but has been of no advantage to me
I can assure you. Men expect one to take into account their fine linen. But I never could get up any enthusiasm about these things. Oh! It's a failing; and then comes a soft evening; a lot of men too indolent for whist
and a story ... " [p.44] — Joseph Conrad

Writing about Africa by Africans has been part of my literary apprenticeship, standing alongside works by authors such as Joseph Conrad, Joyce Cary and Graham Greene as influences. — Giles Foden

If you don't make mistakes, you don't make anything . — Joseph Conrad

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. — Joseph Conrad

The cabman looked at the pieces of silver, which, appearing very minute in his big, grimy palm, symbolised the insignificant results which reward the ambitious courage and toil of a mankind whose day is short on this earth of evil. — Joseph Conrad

One must not make too much of anything in life, good or bad. — Joseph Conrad

There is never any God in a country where men will not help themselves. — Joseph Conrad

Sigh, and then my heart stood still, stopped dead short by an exulting and terrible cry, by the cry of inconceivable triumph and of unspeakable pain. 'I knew it - I was sure!' ... She knew. She was sure. I heard her weeping; she had hidden her face in her hands. It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due? Hadn't he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn't. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark - too dark altogether ... Marlow ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddha. Nobody moved — Joseph Conrad

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. — Joseph Conrad

An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation. — Joseph Conrad

If anybody had ever struggled with a soul, I am the man — Joseph Conrad

To be a great autocrat you must be a great barbarian. — Joseph Conrad

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
his death and her sorrow
I saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death. Do you understand? I saw them together
I heard them together. — Joseph Conrad

It was a great peace, as if the earth had been one grave, and for a time I stood there thinking mostly of the living who, buried in remote places out of the knowledge of mankind, are still fated to share in its tragic or grotesque miseries. In its noble struggles too
who knows? The human heart is vast enough to contain all the world. It is valient enough to bear the burden, but where is the courage that would cast it off? — 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

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, but fear too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions."
"Nice little saloon, isn't it" I said, as if noticing it for the first time.
"At noon I gave no orders for change of course, and the mates whiskers grew much concerned and seemed to be offering themselves to my unduly notice. — Joseph Conrad

brooding over the upper reaches, became — Joseph Conrad

Society was calling to its accomplished child to come, to be taken care of, to be instructed, to be judged, to be condemned; it called him to return to that rubbish heap from which he had wandered away, so that justice could be done. — Joseph Conrad

Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes. — Joseph Conrad

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

As is often the case with lawless natures, Ricardo's faith in any given individual was of a simple, unquestioning character. For man must have some support in life. — Joseph Conrad

I was anxious to deal with this shadow by myself alone -- and to this day I don't know why I was so jealous of sharing with any one the peculiar blackness of that experience. — 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

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. — Joseph Conrad

Stein lifted his hand. "And do you know how many opportunities I let escape; how many dreams I had lost that had come in my way?" He shook his head regretfully. "It seems to me that some would have been very fine - if I had made them come true. Do you know how many? Perhaps I myself don't know. — Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad once said that a man who is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea — Joseph Conrad

Is there a spot on earth where such a man is unknown, an ominous survival testifying to the eternal fitness of lies and impudence? — Joseph Conrad

The world of finance is a mysterious world in which, incredible as the fact may appear, evaporation precedes liquidation. First the capital evaporates, and then the company goes into liquidation. These are very unnatural physics ... — Joseph Conrad

Marvellous!" he repeated, looking up at me.
"Look! The beauty
but that is nothing
look at the accuracy, the harmony. And so fragile! And so strong! And so exact!
This is Nature
the balance of colossal forces. Every star is so
and every blade of grass stands
so
and the mighty Kosmos il perfect equilibrium produces
this.
This wonder; this masterpiece of Nature
the great artist. — Joseph Conrad

And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose. — Joseph Conrad

They were dying slowly - it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now - nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. — Joseph Conrad

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. — Joseph Conrad

Any work aspiring to be art however humble should carry its justification in every line. — Joseph Conrad

For the great mass of mankind the only saving grace that is needed is steady fidelity to what is nearest to hand and heart in the short moment of each human effort. — Joseph Conrad

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. — Joseph Conrad

It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core. — Joseph Conrad

Time had past indeed: it had overtaken him and gone ahead. It had left him hopelessly behind with a few poor gifts: the iron grey hair, the heavy fatigue of the tanned face, two scars, a pair of tarnished shoulderstraps; one of those steady, reliable men who are the raw material of great reputations, one of those unaccounted lives that are buried without drums and trumpets under the foundations of monumental success. — Joseph Conrad

And a word carries far-very far-deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space. — Joseph Conrad

I don't know the world, nor yet the people in it; I have been too solitary - I am too young to trust my own opinions. — Joseph Conrad

The true peace of God begins at any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land. — Joseph Conrad

Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing. — Joseph Conrad

You show them you have in you something that is really profitable, and then there will be no limits to the recognition of your ability, — Joseph Conrad

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

For the vision of a novelist is both complex and specialised; complex, because behind his characters and apart from them must stand something stable to which he relates them; specialised because since he is a single person with one sensibility the aspects of life in which he can believe with conviction are strictly limited — Virginia Woolf

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

The Westerly Wind asserting his sway from the south-west quarter is often like a monarch gone mad, driving forth with wild imprecations the most faithful of his courtiers to shipwreck, disaster, and death. — Joseph Conrad

I just gave them a little scare. A touch of psychological terror. As Joseph Conrad once wrote, true terror is the kind that men feel towards their imagination. (from Super-frog Saves Tokyo) — Haruki Murakami

The artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition-and therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty and pain. — Joseph Conrad

The conquest of the earth is not a pretty thing. — Joseph Conrad

We live as we dream - alone. While the dream disappears, the life continues painfully. — Joseph Conrad

Horror!' "'His last word - to live with,' she murmured. 'Don't you understand I loved him - I loved him - I loved him!' "I pulled myself together and spoke slowly. "'The last word he pronounced — Joseph Conrad

Mr Verloc was going westward through a town without shadows in an atmosphere of powdered old gold — Joseph Conrad

To snatch in a moment of courage, from the remorseless rush of time, a passing phase of life, is only the beginning of the task. The task approached in tenderness and faith is to hold up unquestioningly, without choice and without fear, the rescued fragment before all eyes in the light of a sincere mood. It is to show its vibration, its color, its form; and through its movement, its form, and its color, reveal the substance of its truth - disclose its inspiring secret: the stress and passion within the core of each convincing moment. — Joseph Conrad

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. — Joseph Conrad

Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart - its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life. — Joseph Conrad

I was constantly watching myself, my secret self, as dependent on my actions as my own personality — Joseph Conrad

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

One can't live with one's finger everlastingly on one's pulse. — Joseph Conrad

Surprising. It was just like Marlow. It was accepted in silence. No one took the trouble to grunt even; and presently he said, very slow - I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago - the other day ... 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! But darkness was — Joseph Conrad

Way aft and sat down amongst us. We exchanged a few words lazily. Afterwards there was silence on board the yacht. For some reason or other we did not begin that game of dominoes. We felt meditative, and fit for nothing but placid staring. The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; — Joseph Conrad

The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket. — Joseph Conrad

In plucking the fruit of memory one runs the risk of spoiling its bloom, especially if it has got to be carried into the market. — Joseph Conrad

We live as we dream--alone.... — Joseph Conrad

Mr Verloc extended as much recognition to Stevie as a man not particularly fond of animals may give to his wife's beloved cat; and this recognition, benevolent and perfunctory, was essentially of the same quality. — Joseph Conrad

Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham. — Joseph Conrad

A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times in a sudden recrudescence of glare. — Joseph Conrad

How can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammelled feet may take him into by the way of solitude-utter solitude without a policeman-by the way of silence-utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbor can be heard whispering of public opinion? 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. — Joseph Conrad

It's a long time since God has done anything for the people. — Joseph Conrad

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

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

The serenity of truth and the peace of death can be only secured through a largeness of contempt embracing all the profitable servitudes of life. He — Joseph Conrad

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters. — Joseph Conrad

My task is to make you hear, feel and see. That and no more, and that is everything. — Joseph Conrad

Two women, one fat and the other slim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at me - still knitting with downcast eyes - and only just as I began to think of getting out of her way, as you would for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up. Her dress was as plain as an umbrella-cover, and she turned round without a word and preceded me into a waiting-room. — Joseph Conrad

A certain readiness to perish is not so very rare, but it is seldom that you meet men whose souls, steeled in the impenetrable armour of resolution, are ready to fight a losing battle to the last, the desire of peace waxes stronger as hope declines, till at last it conquers the very desire of life. Which of us here has not observed this, or maybe experienced something of that feeling in his own person - this extreme weariness of emotions, the vanity of effort, the yearning for rest? — Joseph Conrad

For history is made with tools, not with ideas; and everything is changed by economic conditions - art, philosophy, love, virtue - truth itself! — Joseph Conrad

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. — 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

The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion. — Joseph Conrad

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 face bereavement, dishonour, and the perdition of one's soul - than this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true. And these chaps, too, had no earthly reason for any kind of scruple. Restraint! I would just as soon have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a battlefield. — Joseph Conrad

I am quite willing to be the blind instrument of higher ends. To give one's life for the cause is nothing. But to have one's illusions destroyed - that is really almost more than one can bear. — Joseph Conrad

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 council with this great solitude - and the whisper has proved irresistibly fascinating. — Joseph Conrad

In the destructive element immerse. — Joseph Conrad

A ship in dock, surrounded by quays and the walls of warehouses, has the appearance of a prisoner meditating upon freedom in the sadness of a free spirit put under restraint. — Joseph Conrad

All idealisation makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity - it is to destroy it. — Joseph Conrad

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. — Joseph Conrad

I suppose everybody must be always just a little homesick. — 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

It would take too long to explain the intimate alliance of contradictions in human nature which makes love itself wear at times the desperate shape of betrayal. And perhaps there is no possible explanation. — Joseph Conrad

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

There must be a wonderful soothing power in mere words since so many men have used them for self-communion. Being — Joseph Conrad

The unchanging Man of history is wonderfully adaptable cloth by his power of endurance and in his capacity for detachment. The fact seems to be that the play of his destiny is too great for his fears and too mysterious for his understanding. Were the trump of the Last Judgement to sound suddenly on a working day the musician at his piano would go on with his performance of Beethoven's Sonata and the cobbler at his stall stick to his last in undisturbed confidence in the virtues of the leather. And with perfect propriety. For what are we to let ourselves be disturbed by an angel's vengeful music too mighty for our ears and too awful for our terrors ? Thus it happens to us to be struck suddenly by the lightning of wrath. The reader will go on reading if the book pleases him and the critic will go on criticizing with that faculty of detachment born perhaps from a sense of infinite littleness and wich is yet the only faculty that seems to assimilate man to the immortal gods. — Joseph Conrad

We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there - there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were - No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it - this suspicion — Joseph Conrad