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Top Joseph Conrad Quotes

Browse top 287 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Joseph Conrad.

Favorite Joseph Conrad Quotes

1. "But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition— and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He 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 that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts, to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity— the dead to the living and the living to the unborn." ~ Joseph Conrad
2. "I suppose everybody must be always just a little homesick." ~ Joseph Conrad
3. "The condemned social order has not been built up on paper and ink, and I don't fancy that a combination of paper and ink will ever put an end to it." ~ Joseph Conrad
4. "Often far away there I thought of these two, guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool as for a warm pall, one introducing, introducing continuously to the unknown, the other scrutinizing the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes. Ave! Old knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant. Not many of those she looked at ever saw her again--not half, by a long way." ~ Joseph Conrad
5. "The afternoon breeze would incite to a weird and flabby activity all that crowded mass of clothing, with its vague suggestions of drowned, mutilated and flattened humanity. Trunks without heads waved at you arms without hands; legs without feet kicked fantastically with collapsible flourishes; and there were long white garments, that taking the wind fairly through their neck openings edged with lace, became for a moment violently distended as by the passage of obese and invisible bodies. On these days you could make out that ship at a great distance by the multi-coloured grotesque riot going on abaft her mizzen-mast." ~ Joseph Conrad
6. "Protection is the first necessity of opulence and luxury" ~ Joseph Conrad
7. "Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end." ~ Joseph Conrad
8. "The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse." ~ Joseph Conrad
9. "[…] but I remember I preferred the soldier to the philosopher at the time; a preference which life has only confirmed. One was a man, and the other was either more – or less. However, they are both dead, and Mrs Beard is dead, and youth, strength, genius, thoughts, achievements, simple hearts – all dies… No matter." ~ Joseph Conrad
10. "...; the chipped plates might have been disinterred from some kitchen midden near an inhabited lake; and the chops recalled times more ancient still. They brought forcibly to one's mind the night of ages when the primeval man, evolving the first rudiments of cookery from his dim consciousness, scorched lumps of flesh at a fire of sticks..." ~ Joseph Conrad
11. "Some great men owe most of their greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for their tools the exact quality of strength that matters for their work. " ~ Joseph Conrad
12. "What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men's existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history." ~ Joseph Conrad
13. "the artist descends within himself, and in that lonely region of stress and strife, if he be deserving and fortunate, he finds the terms of his appeal. His appeal is made to our less obvious capacities: to that part of our nature which, because of the warlike conditions of existence, is necessarily kept out of sight within the more resisting and hard qualities … His appeal is less loud, more profound, less distinct, more stirring—and sooner forgotten. Yet its effect endures forever ... the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom: to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition—and, therefore, more permanently enduring." ~ Joseph Conrad
14. "And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men." ~ Joseph Conrad
15. "This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak—the sea entering into the life of most men, and the men knowing something or everything about the sea, in the way of amusement, of travel, or of bread-winning." ~ Joseph Conrad
16. "The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to topple over the creek, to sweep every little man of us out of his little existence. And it moved not. A deadened burst of mighty splashes and snorts reached us from afar, as though an ichthyosaurus had been taking a bath of glitter in the great river." ~ Joseph Conrad
17. "I -- I alone know how to mourn for him as he deserves.' But while we were still shaking hands, such a look of awful desolation came upon her face that I perceived she was one of those creatures that are not the playthings of Time. For her he had died only yesterday. And, by Jove! the impression was so powerful that for me, too, he seemed to have died only yesterday -- nay, this very minute. I saw her and him in the same instant of time -- his death and her sorrow -- I saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death. Do you understand? I saw them together -- I heard them together." ~ Joseph Conrad
18. "A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line." ~ Joseph Conrad
19. "But sometimes, by the deserving and the fortunate, even that task is accomplished. And when it is accomplished— behold!— all the truth of life is there: a moment of vision, a sigh, a smile— and the return to an eternal rest." ~ Joseph Conrad
20. "You can't, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty." ~ Joseph Conrad
21. "The sea - this truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness - has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power." ~ Joseph Conrad
22. "Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted." ~ Joseph Conrad
23. "But in a gale, the silent machinery of a sailing-ship would catch not only the power, but the wild and exulting voice of the world's soul. Whether she ran with her tall spars swinging, or breasted it with her tall spars lying over, there was always that wild song, deep like a chant, for a bass to the shrill pipe of the wind played on the sea-tops, with a punctuating crash, now and then, of a breaking wave. At times the weird effects of that invisible orchestra would get upon a man's nerves till he wished himself deaf." ~ Joseph Conrad
24. "I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men — men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be, too, I was only to find out several months later and a thousand miles farther." ~ Joseph Conrad
25. "All the pilgrims rushed out to see. I remained, and went on with my dinner. I believe I was considered brutally callous. However, I did not eat much." ~ Joseph Conrad
26. "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." ~ Joseph Conrad
27. "We can never cease to be ourselves." ~ Joseph Conrad
28. "I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts." ~ Joseph Conrad
29. "It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp." ~ Joseph Conrad
30. "The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is theprivilege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautifulcontinuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection." ~ Joseph Conrad
31. "Felicity, felicity - how shall I say it? - is quaffed out of a golden cup in every latitude: the flavour is with you - with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you please." ~ Joseph Conrad
32. "Had he been informed by an indisputable authority that the end of the world was to be finally accomplished by a catastrophic disturbance of the atmosphere, he would have assimilated the information under the simple idea of dirty weather, and no other, because he had no experience of cataclysms, and belief does not necessarily imply comprehension." ~ Joseph Conrad
33. "There too he had been treated with revolting injustice. His struggles, his privations,his hard work to raise himself in the social scale, hadfilled him with such an exalted conviction of his merits that it was extremely difficult for the world to treat him with justice— the standard of that notion depending so much upon the patience of the individual. The Professor had genius, but lacked the great social virtue of resignation." ~ Joseph Conrad
34. "She was engaged in the task of defending her position in life," said Heyst. "It's a very respectable task." ~ Joseph Conrad
35. "Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:The horror! The horror!" ~ Joseph Conrad
36. "And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose." ~ Joseph Conrad
37. "Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is the very essence of dreams..." ~ Joseph Conrad
38. "The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness." ~ Joseph Conrad
39. "Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys." ~ Joseph Conrad
40. "Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it." ~ Joseph Conrad
41. "The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness." ~ Joseph Conrad
42. "Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put its trust in life." ~ Joseph Conrad
43. "Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear." ~ Joseph Conrad
44. "Never test another man by your own weakness." ~ Joseph Conrad
45. "For a moment I had a view of a world that seemed to wear a vast and dismal aspect of disorder, while, in truth, thanks to our unwearied efforts, it is as sunny an arrangement of small conveniences as the mind of man can conceive." ~ Joseph Conrad
46. "Wir gehen mit Worten Kompromisse ein. Es hilft uns auch nicht weiter.Es ist wie ein Wald in dem niemand den Weg kennt. Man ist verloren, während man noch ruft: "Ich bin gerettet"." ~ Joseph Conrad
47. "We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the August light of abiding memories." ~ Joseph Conrad
48. "No eloquence could have been so withering to one's belief in mankind as his final burst of sincerity." ~ Joseph Conrad
49. "Conrad placed on the title page an epigraph taken from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene:"Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please" This also became Conrad's epitaph." ~ Joseph Conrad
50. "And yet I have known the sea too long to believe in its respect for decency. An elemental force is ruthlessly frank" ~ Joseph Conrad
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I'm very social, and in a place like New York, even if you're alone on the subway, you never feel lonely."
Author: Ana Gasteyer

What Did Joseph Conrad Talk About?

Ear
Con
Wit
Thin
Per
Lit
Here
Ten
End
Able
Self
Ring
Thou
King
Hen
Tan
Lie
Hey
Act
Sin
Rest
Era
She
Hear
Old
Bee
Sit
Seem
Owe
Low
Though
Earth
Less
Sea
Once
Los
Pen
Light
Use
Ought
Heart
Ours
Face
Word
May
Nation
Son
Ally
Seemed
Ways

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