Joseph Conrad quotes - page 3

Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British writer, renowned for his English-language novels exploring the complexities of human nature and the sea. His works, such as "Heart of Darkness" and "Lord Jim," are celebrated for their psychological depth and vivid narrative style. He influenced modern literature with his innovative use of language and perspective. Here are 172 of his quotes:

Going home must be like going to render an account.

Joseph Conrad

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.

Joseph Conrad

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

Joseph Conrad

A droll thing life isthat mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself and that comes too late.

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

But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad.

Joseph Conrad

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

Joseph Conrad

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.

Joseph Conrad

He hated all this, and somehow he couldn't get away.

Joseph Conrad

We live in the flicker -- may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday.

Joseph Conrad

We can never cease to be ourselves.

Joseph Conrad

Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall.

Joseph Conrad

Never test another man by your own weakness.

Joseph Conrad

I let him run on, this papier-maché Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.

Joseph Conrad

They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares.

Joseph Conrad

And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible.

Joseph Conrad

The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil water-way leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

Joseph Conrad

Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes.

Joseph Conrad

In plucking the fruit of memory one runs the risk of spoiling its bloom.

Joseph Conrad

Having had to encounter single-handed during his period of eclipse many physical dangers, he was well aware of the most dangerous element common to them all: of the crushing, paralyzing sense of human littleness, which is what really defeats a man struggling with natural forces, alone, far from the eyes of his fellows.

Joseph Conrad

Let a fool be made serviceable according to his folly.

Joseph Conrad

The truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy known but to few on this Earth, and whom only the simplest of us are fit to withstand. The brilliant Costaguanaro of the boulevards had died from solitude and want of faith in himself and others.

Joseph Conrad