01UndatedDroll 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 / quote ↗
02UndatedFew 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.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
03UndatedMy 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.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
07UndatedBy 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 / quote ↗
08UndatedAll idealisation makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity — it is to destroy it.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
09UndatedShe had said he had been driven away from her by a dream,--and there was no answer one could make her--there 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 / quote ↗
10UndatedAnd 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 / quote ↗
11UndatedIn 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 / quote ↗
12UndatedI 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 itselfJoseph Conrad / quote ↗
14UndatedHow 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 / quote ↗
15UndatedI 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 / quote ↗
16UndatedAre not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention?Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
17UndatedI 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 / quote ↗
18UndatedI -- 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 / quote ↗
20UndatedMy 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 / quote ↗
21UndatedThey trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
22UndatedIt is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
23UndatedI 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 / quote ↗
24UndatedI remembered the old doctor, - "It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot." I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
