Joseph Conrad Quotes - Page 3

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

All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising.

I slipped the book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship.

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.

A man's most open actions have a secret side to them.

As a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement.

Necessity, they say, is mother of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions.

To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.

There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.

Your strength is just an accident owed to the weakness of others.

A fool has more ideas than a wise man can foresee.

Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets.

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.

Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes.

I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine.

The real significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind.

A certain simplicity of thought is common to serene souls at both ends of the social scale.

The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket.

There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies.

[The artist] speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation--and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear…which binds together all humanity--the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.

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

Violence is not a catalyst but a diversion.

A word carries far, very far, deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space.

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.

I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go