Joseph Conrad Quotes

He existed for me, and after all it is only through me that he exists for you.

Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it, not a sentimental pretence but an idea: and an unselfish belief in the idea — something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to...

It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.

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

You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.

A man's real life is that accorded to him in the thoughts of other men by reason of respect or natural love.

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

I 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 itself.

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

Protection is the first necessity of opulence and luxury.

We couldn't understand because we were too far... and could not remember because we were traveling in the night of first ages, those ages that had gone, leaving hardly a sign... and no memories.

Faith is a myth and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of to-morrow.... In this world – as I have known it – we are made to suffer without the shadow of a reason, of a cause or of guilt.... There is no morality, no knowledge and no hope; there is only the consciousness of ourselves which drives us about a world that... is always but a vain and fleeting appearance.... A moment, a twinkling of an eye and nothing remains – but a clod of mud, of cold mud, of dead mud cast into black space, rolling around an extinguished sun. Nothing. Neither thought, nor sound, nor soul. Nothing.

No, I don’t like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don’t like work – no man does – but I like what is in the work, - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality – for yourself, not for others – what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.

Over the lives borne from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness.