Quotes of Joseph Conrad - somelinesforyou

“ All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind. ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ All a man can betray is his conscience. ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace. ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life. ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer. ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness. ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ He struggled with himself, too. I saw it — I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself. ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ Droll thing life is that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself that comes too late a crop of inextinguishable regrets. ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ Like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker. ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feelit is, before all, to make you see. ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ The question is not how to get cured, but how to live. ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ By heavens! there is something after all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while another must not look at a halter. Steal a horse straight out. Very well. He has done it. Perhaps he can ride. But there is a way of looking at a halter that would provoke the most charitable of saints into a kick. ”

- 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

“ 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? ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ She had said he had been driven away from her by a dream,and there was no answer one could make herthere 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? ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ In a dispassionate view the ardour for reform, improvement for virtue, for knowledge, and even beauty is only a vein sticking up for appearances as though one were anxious about the cut of ones clothes in a community of blind men. ”

- 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

“ One must not make too much of anything in life, good or bad. ”

- Joseph Conrad

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

- Joseph Conrad

“ I remember staying to look at it for a long time, as one would linger within reach of a consoling whisper. The sky was pearly grey. It was one of those overcast days so rare in the tropics, in which memories crowd upon one, memories of other shores, of other faces. ”

- Joseph Conrad

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

- 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

“ There can be no life without faith and lovefaith in a human heart, love of a human being! That touch of grace, whose help once in life is the privilege of the most undeserving, flung open for him the portals of beyond, and in contemplating there the certitude immaterial and precious he forgot all the meaningless accidents of existence: the bliss of getting, the delight of enjoying; all the protean and enticing forms of the cupidity that rules a material world of foolish joys, of contemptible sorrows. Faith!Love!the undoubting, clear faith in the truth of a soulthe great tenderness, deep as the ocean, serene and eternal, like the infinite peace of space above the short tempests of the earth. It was what he had wanted all his lifebut he understood it only then for the first time. It was through the pain of losing her that the knowledge had come. She had the gift! She had the gift! And in all the world she was the only human being that could surrender it to his immense desire. ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feelit is, before all, to make you see. ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ My task which I am trying to achieve 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. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask. ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ A writing may be lost; a lie may be written; but what the eye has seen is truth and remains in the mind! ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall. ”

- Joseph Conrad

“ I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying though 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. ”

- Joseph Conrad
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