01c. 1890 ADHunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
02c. 1890 ADThe sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
03c. 1890 ADPrinciples? Principles won’t do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags—rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
04c. 1890 ADThe sun was fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip with steam.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
05c. 1890 ADAnd 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 / quote ↗
06c. 1890 ADThe sky over Patusan was blood-red, immense, streaming like an open vein. An enormous sun nestled crimson amongst the treetops, and the forest below had a black and forbidding face.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
07c. 1890 AD[The wilderness] had caressed him, and—lo!—he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
08c. 1890 ADThe sea, perhaps because of its saltiness, roughens the outside but keeps sweet the kernel of its servants' soul.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
09c. 1890 ADThis could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak—the sea entering into the life of most men, and the men knowing something or everything about the sea, in the way of amusement, of travel, or of bread-winning.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
10c. 1890 ADAnd yet I have known the sea too long to believe in its respect for decency. An elemental force is ruthlessly frankJoseph Conrad / quote ↗
11c. 1890 ADI 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. 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.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
12c. 1890 ADWell, you know, that was the worst of it - this suspicion of not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity - like yours - the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
13c. 1890 ADA 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 / quote ↗
14c. 1890 ADAnd because you not always can keep your eyes shut there comes the real trouble--the heart pain--the world pain. I tell you, my friend, it is not good for you to find you cannot make your dream come true, for the reason that you not strong enough are, or not clever enough. . . . Ja! . . . And all the time you are such a fine fellow too! Wie? Was? Gott im Himmel! How can that be? Ha! ha! ha!"’The shadow prowling amongst the graves of butterflies laughed boisterously.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
15c. 1890 ADYou revolutionists' the other continued, with leisurely self-confidence, 'are the slaves of the social convention, which is afraid of you; slaves of it as much as the very police that stands up in the defence of that convention. Clearly you are, since you want to revolutionize it. It governs your action, too, and thus neither your thought nor your action can ever be conclusive. (...) 'You are not a bit better than the forces arrayed against you -- than the police, for instance. The other day I came suddenly upon Chief Inspector Heat at the corner of Tottenham Court Road. He looked at me very steadily. But I did not look at him. Why should I give him more than a glance ? He was thinking of many things -- of his superiors, of his reputation, of the law courts, of his salary, of newspapers -- of a hundred things. But I was thinking of my perfect detonator only. He meant nothing to me. He was as insignificant as -- I can't call to mind anything insignificant enough to compare him with -- except Karl Yundt perhaps. Like to like. The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket. Revolutions, legality -- counter moves in the same game; forms of idleness at bottom identical. He plays his little game -- so do you propagandists.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
16c. 1890 ADAll my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and, however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part. The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is—marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvelous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural which . . . is but a manufactured article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living, in their countless multitudes; a desecration of our tenderest memories; an outrage on our dignity.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
17c. 1890 ADThe afternoon breeze would incite to a weird and flabby activity all that crowded mass of clothing, with its vague suggestions of drowned, mutilated and flattened humanity. Trunks without heads waved at you arms without hands; legs without feet kicked fantastically with collapsible flourishes; and there were long white garments, that taking the wind fairly through their neck openings edged with lace, became for a moment violently distended as by the passage of obese and invisible bodies. On these days you could make out that ship at a great distance by the multi-coloured grotesque riot going on abaft her mizzen-mast.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
18c. 1890 ADAction is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
19c. 1890 ADHistory repeats itself but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
20c. 1890 ADThe 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 / quote ↗
21c. 1890 ADHow does one kill fear I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart slash off its spectral head take it by the spectral throat?Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
22c. 1890 ADWho would care to question the ground of forgiveness or compassion?Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
24c. 1890 ADAs in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices.Joseph Conrad / quote ↗
