Joseph Conrad Quotes

Joy and sorrow in this world pass into each other, mingling their forms and their murmurs in the twilight of life as mysterious as an overshadowed ocean, while the dazzling brightness of supreme hopes lies far off, fascinating and still, on the distant edge of the horizon

We return to face our superiors, our kindred, our friends — - those whom we obey, and those whom we love; but even they who have neither, the most free, lonely, irresponsible and bereft of ties, — - even those for whom home holds no dear face, no familiar voice, — - even they have to meet the spirit that dwells within the land, under its sky, in its air, in its valleys, and on its rises, in its fields, in its waters and its tress — - a mute friend, judge, and inspirer.
Say what you like, to get its joy, to breathe its peace, to face its truth, one must return with a clear conscience.
All this may seem to you sheer sentimentalism; and indeed very few of us have the will or capacity to look consciously under the surface of familiar emotions.
There are the girls we love, the men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the pleasures! But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with clean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp.

There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind.

I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmostphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary.

There are more kinds of fools than one can guard against.

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. 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.

Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart - its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life.

We live as we dream — alone....

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.

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

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

Like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker.