Joseph Conrad Quotes

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.

For the great mass of mankind the only saving grace that is needed is steady fidelity to what is nearest to hand and heart in the short moment of each human effort.

A man is a worker. If he is not that he is nothing.

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

Reality, as usual, beats fiction out of sight.

Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love — and to put its trust in life!!

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.

The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.

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

It is not the clear-sighted who lead the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm mental fog.

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

I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make despair pause. For in truth we who are creatures of impulse are not creatures of despair.

It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate awaiting them on this earth.

As to honour — you know — it's a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn't theirs.

One wonders that there can be found a man courageous enough to occupy the post. It is a matter of meditation. Having given it a few minutes I come to the conclusion in the serenity of my heart and the peace of my conscience that he must be either an extreme megalomaniac or an utterly unconscious being.