Joseph Conrad quotes - page 4

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:

Even geniuses get the blues. The more I write the less substance I see in my work, ... It is tolerably awful. And I face it, I face it but the fright is growing on me. My fortitude is shaken by the view of the monster. It does not move its eyes are baleful it is as still as death itself -- and it will devour me. Its stare has eaten into my soul already deep, deep.

Joseph Conrad

Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end.

Joseph Conrad

The air of the New World seems favorable to the art of declamation.

Joseph Conrad

The world of finance is a mysterious world in which, incredible as the fact may appear, evaporation precedes liquidation.

Joseph Conrad

There is no peace and no rest in the development of material interests. They have their law, and their justice. But it is founded on expediency, and is inhuman; it is without rectitude, without the continuity and the force that can be found only in a moral principal.

Joseph Conrad

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.

Joseph Conrad

It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull.

Joseph Conrad

Egoism, which is the moving force of the world, and altruism, which is its morality, these two contradictory instincts, of which one is so plain and the other so mysterious, cannot serve us unless in the incomprehensible alliance of their irreconcilable antagonism.

Joseph Conrad

The sea never changes and its works, for all the talks of men, are wrapped in mystery.

Joseph Conrad

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.

Joseph Conrad

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.

Joseph Conrad

Above all, we must forgive the unhappy souls who have elected to make the pilgrimage on foot, who skirt the shore and look uncomprehendingly upon the horror of the struggle, the joy of victory, the profound hopelessness of the vanquished.

Joseph Conrad

The mind of man is capable of anything.

Joseph Conrad

He remembered that she was pretty, and, more, that she had a special grace in the intimacy of life. She had the secret of individuality which excites--and escapes.

Joseph Conrad

Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing.

Joseph Conrad

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.

Joseph Conrad

All a man can betray is his conscience.

Joseph Conrad

Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy.

Joseph Conrad

It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.

Joseph Conrad

They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force--nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.

Joseph Conrad

No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone.

Joseph Conrad

All idealization makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity - it is to destroy it.

Joseph Conrad