“A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea.”
“One wonders that there can be found a man courageous enough to occupy the post. It is a matter of meditation. Having given it a few minutes I come to the conclusion in the serenity of my heart and the peace of my conscience that he must be either an extreme megalomaniac or an utterly unconscious being.”
Source: Greatest Works of Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, The Duel, Lord Jim, Victory, The Shadow-Line, The Arrow of Gold, The Secret Agent, The Nigger of the Narcissus & Under Western Eyes: Classics of World Literature from One of the Greatest English Novelists (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)
“For a moment I had a view of a world that seemed to wear a vast and dismal aspect of disorder, while, in truth, thanks to our unwearied efforts, it is as sunny an arrangement of small conveniences as the mind of man can conceive.”
Source: Lord Jim: Conrad's Collections
“The blight of futility that lies in wait for men's speeches had fallen upon our conversation and made it a thing of empty sounds.”
Source: Lord Jim
“I remember my youth... the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men.”
Source: The Secret Sharer and Other Stories
“Being a lady is a frightfully troublesome assignment, since it comprises mainly in managing men.”
“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.”
Source: Joseph Conrad The Dover Reader
“Of all the inanimate objects, of all men's creations, books are the nearest to us for they contain our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to the truth, and our persistent leanings to error. But most of all they resemble us in their precious hold on life.”
“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”
“Life knows us not and we do not know life—-we don’t know even our own thoughts. Half the words we use have no meaning whatever and of the other half each man understands each word after the fashion of his own folly and conceit. Faith is a myth and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of tomorrow”
Source: The Selected Letters of 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.”
Source: Lord Jim
“The mind of man is capable of anything.”
Source: Heart of Darkness Thrift Study Edition
“the mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future”
Source: Heart of Darkness
“It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self knowledge.”
Source: Lord Jim
“I saw him open his mouth wide. . . as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him.”
Source: The Heart of Darkness (Sparklesoup Classics)
“The mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage--who can tell?--but truth--truth stripped of its cloak of time.”
Source: Heart of Darkness
“Never test another man by your own weakness.”
“The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver - over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a sombre gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself.”
Source: Heart of Darkness
“Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time.”
“A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.”
“A man is a worker. If he is not that he is nothing.”
Source: Notes on Life and Letters
“It is the mark of an inexperienced man not to believe in luck.”
“Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end.”
Source: Greatest Works of Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, The Duel, Lord Jim, Victory, The Shadow-Line, The Arrow of Gold, The Secret Agent, The Nigger of the Narcissus & Under Western Eyes: Classics of World Literature from One of the Greatest English Novelists (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)
“The last thing a woman will consent to in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.”
Source: Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels [Nostromo, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, etc.] (Book House)
“What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow men's existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history.”
Source: The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad
“Things and men have always a certain sense, a certain side by which they must be got hold of if one wants to obtain a solid grasp and a perfect command.”
Source: The Complete Novels of Joseph Conrad - All 20 Works in One Premium Edition: Including Unforgettable Titles like Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, Under Western Eyes and Many More (With Author’s Letters, Memoirs and Critical Essays)
“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.”
Source: Lord Jim
“A fool has more ideas than a wise man can foresee.”
“You can t, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty. And least of all can you condemn an artist pursuing, however humbly and imperfectly, a creative aim. In that interior world where his thought and his emotions go seeking for the experience of imagined adventures, there are no policemen, no law, no pressure of circumstance or dread of opinion to keep him within bounds. Who then is going to say Nay to his temptations if not his conscience?”
Source: Lord Jim (Unabridged Deluxe Edition): A Classic Novel of Guilt and Atonement From the Renowned Author of Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, The Secret Agent & Under Western Eyes (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)
“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.”
Source: Lord Jim
“Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.”
“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”
“Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put its trust in life.”
Source: Greatest Works of Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, The Duel, Lord Jim, Victory, The Shadow-Line, The Arrow of Gold, The Secret Agent, The Nigger of the Narcissus & Under Western Eyes: Classics of World Literature from One of the Greatest English Novelists (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)
“I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.”
Source: The Complete Novels of Joseph Conrad - All 20 Works in One Premium Edition: Including Unforgettable Titles like Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, Under Western Eyes and Many More (With Author’s Letters, Memoirs and Critical Essays)
“They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience.”
Source: Under Western Eyes (Unabridged Deluxe Edition): An Intriguing Tale of Espionage and Betrayal in Czarist Russia From the Renowned Author of Heart of Darkness, Nostromo & The Secret Agent (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)
“You can't, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty.”
Source: Complete Short Stories of Joseph Conrad (Including His Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays: Unforgettable Tales like Heart of Darkness, Point of Honor, Falk, Secret Sharer, The Return & Freya of Seven Isles
“An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated)
“This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still.”
Source: Lord Jim
“You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.”
“Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life.”
Source: Lord Jim
“The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.”
Source: The Mirror of the Sea
“A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavor to do, he drowns.”
“As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and the consistent narrowness of his outlook.”
Source: A Personal Record: Some Reminiscences
“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.”
“A man's real life is that accorded to him in the thoughts of other men by reason of respect or natural love.”
“Some great men owe most of their greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for their tools the exact quality of strength that matters for their work.”
Source: Lord Jim
“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.”
Source: The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad: 20 Novels & 26 Short Stories (Including Memoirs, Essays & Letters in One Single Edition): Classics of World Literature from One of the Greatest English Novelists: Heart of Darkness, The Duel, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, The Shadow-Line & Under Western Eyes
“For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed for it, for all the celebrations it has been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.”
Source: Joseph Conrad’s Sea Tales - Premium Collection: An Outcast of the Islands, The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’, A Smile of Fortune, Typhoon and more: Classics of World Literature from One of the Greatest English Novelists (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)
“Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.”
“A man's most open actions have a secret side to them.”
Source: Joseph Conrad Ultimate Collection: 18 Novels, 20+ Short Stories, Letters & Memoirs: Including Classics like Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Duel, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, Victory, The Shadow-Line & Under Western Eyes
