If we could only get rid of consciousness. What makes manki… - Joseph Conrad

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If we could only get rid of consciousness. What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it. To be part of the animal kingdom under the conditions of this earth is very well — but as soon as you know of your slavery, the pain, the anger, the strife — the tragedy begins. We can't return to nature, since we can't change our place in it. Our refuge is in stupidity [...] 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 floating appearance.

Joseph Conrad

animal-kingdom refuge strife slavery consciousness stupidity nature victims anger tragic vain morality appearance mankind pain hope conscious tragedy knowledge

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About Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad (3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish writer, working in England, regarded as one of the greatest novelists in the English language.

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Also Known As

Alternative Names: Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski • Józef Teodor Nałęcz Konrad Korzeniowski

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What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it.

Originators like Joseph Conrad:

H. G. Wells John Steinbeck William Faulkner Nathaniel Hawthorne Herman Melville

Additional quotes by Joseph Conrad

Youth is insolent; it is its right – its necessity; it has got to assert itself, and all assertion in this world of doubts is a defiance, is an insolence…

How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?

For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed to feel for it, for all the celebrations it had 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.

If we could only get rid of consciousness. What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it.… - Joseph Conrad

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