Quotes by
Joseph Conrad |
1857-1924 , British-Polish writer
English novelist and short-story writer of Polish descent, whose works include the novels Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo (1904), and The Secret Agent (1907) and the short story Heart of Darkness (1902). During his lifetime Conrad was admired for the richness of his prose and his renderings of dangerous life at sea and in exotic places.
He has been increasingly regarded as one of the greatest English novelists.
| 47 quotes | 389 visits |
Quotations
| • | I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. 2 |
| • | God is for men, and religion for women. 2 |
| • | Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men. 1 |
| • | Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time. 1 |
| • | To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence. 1 |
| • | Your strength is just an accident owed to the weakness of others. 1 |
| • | It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth. 1 |
| • | Nowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks, and months fall away quicker into the past. They seem to be left astern as easily as the light air-bubbles in the swirls of the ship's wake. 1 |
| • | In order to move others deeply, we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility. |
| • | Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it. |
| • | The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. |
| • | I don't like work... but I like what is in work – the chance to find yourself. Your own reality – for yourself, not for others – which no other man can ever know. |
| • | We live as we dream - alone. While the dream disappears, the life continues painfully. |
| • | Follow your bliss. Find where it is and don't be afraid to follow it. |
| • | You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends. |
| • | All roads are long which lead to one's heart's desire. |
| • | Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off. |
| • | Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear. |
| • | Reality, as usual, beats fiction out of sight. |
| • | 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. |
| • | It is the mark of an inexperienced man not to believe in luck. |
| • | 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. |
| • | Kisses are the remnants of paradise. |
| • | 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. |
| • | One must explore deep and believe the incredible to find the new particles of truth floating in an ocean of insignificance. |
| • | It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose. |
| • | A certain simplicity of thought is common to serene souls at both ends of the social scale. |
| • | Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes. |
| • | It’s extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it’s just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome. |
| • | Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. |
| • | It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog. |
| • | There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea. |
| • | Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys. |
| • | Never test another man by your own weakness. |
| • | All a man can betray is his conscience. |
| • | The ethical view of the universe involves us in so many cruel and absurd contradictions that I have come to suspect that the aim of creation cannot be ethical at all. |
| • | Necessity, they say, is mother of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions. |
| • | Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings. |
| • | A man is a worker. If he is not that he is nothing. |
| • | The real significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind. |
| • | The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness. |
| • | To be a great autocrat you must be a great barbarian. |
| • | Do not talk to me of Archimedes’ lever. He was an absent-minded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world. |
| • | 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. |
| • | The question is not how to get cured, but how to live. |
| • | We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. |
| • | I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go. |
