Joseph Conrad quote: "It was one of those dewy, clear, starry nights, oppressing our spirit, crushing our pride, by the brilliant evidence of the awful loneliness, of the hopeless obscure insignificance of our globe lost in the splendid revelation of a glittering, soulless universe."

This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on h...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely th...
JOSEPH CONRAD

In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bo...
JOSEPH CONRAD

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

There are the girls we love, the men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportuniti...
JOSEPH CONRAD

She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, wi...
JOSEPH CONRAD

It is the mark of an inexperienced man not to believe in luck.
JOSEPH CONRAD

I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an ...
JOSEPH CONRAD

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

Gossip is what no one claims to like -- but everyone enjoys.
JOSEPH CONRAD

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, ...
JOSEPH CONRAD

To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man app...
JOSEPH CONRAD

We live as we dream--alone....
JOSEPH CONRAD

Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.
JOSEPH CONRAD

He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference. The dan...
JOSEPH CONRAD

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different com...
JOSEPH CONRAD

I don't like work--no man does--but I like what is in the work--the chance to find yourself. Your ow...
JOSEPH CONRAD

I remember staying to look at it for a long time, as one would linger within reach of a consoling wh...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.
JOSEPH CONRAD

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

What all men are really after is some form, or perhaps only some formula, of peace.
JOSEPH CONRAD

There are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; ea...
JOSEPH CONRAD

A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out in...
JOSEPH CONRAD

What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men's existence strong enough to take upon itself ...
JOSEPH CONRAD

I dare say I am compelled, unconsciously compelled, now to write volume after volume, as in past yea...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it.
JOSEPH CONRAD

Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, ...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little...
JOSEPH CONRAD

An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the i...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in eve...
JOSEPH CONRAD

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, ...
JOSEPH CONRAD

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
JOSEPH CONRAD

I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an ...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.
JOSEPH CONRAD

A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.
JOSEPH CONRAD

A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wic...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the s...
JOSEPH CONRAD

How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a specter through the heart, slash off its spectr...
JOSEPH CONRAD

It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them o...
JOSEPH CONRAD

I would not unduly praise the virtue of restraint. It is often merely temperamental. But it is not a...
JOSEPH CONRAD

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

Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praiseworthy sincerity ...
JOSEPH CONRAD

History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It...
JOSEPH CONRAD

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

It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible,...
JOSEPH CONRAD

It is a maudlin and indecent verity that comes out through the strength of wine.
JOSEPH CONRAD

The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of Westerly Weather, is an impassive-faced tyrant with...
JOSEPH CONRAD

The Westerly Wind asserting his sway from the south-west quarter is often like a monarch gone mad, d...
JOSEPH CONRAD

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

Some great men owe most of their greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for the...
JOSEPH CONRAD

They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond fi...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Who knows what true loneliness is -- not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely ...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Danger lies in the writer becoming the victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of si...
JOSEPH CONRAD

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

It is very difficult to be wholly joyous or wholly sad on this earth. The comic, when it is human, s...
JOSEPH CONRAD

You can t, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty...
JOSEPH CONRAD

It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull.
JOSEPH CONRAD

The sea -- this truth must be confessed -- has no generosity. No display of manly qualities -- coura...
JOSEPH CONRAD

The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.
JOSEPH CONRAD

There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembod...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, i...
JOSEPH CONRAD

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

As to honor -- you know -- it's a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It ...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man root...
JOSEPH CONRAD

The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intellige...
JOSEPH CONRAD

The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regard...
JOSEPH CONRAD

There is a kind way of assisting our fellow-creatures which is enough to break their hearts while it...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.
JOSEPH CONRAD

The sea--this truth must be confessed-- has no generosity. No display of manly qualities-- courage,...
JOSEPH CONRAD

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every w...
JOSEPH CONRAD

All a man can betray is his conscience.
JOSEPH CONRAD

All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
JOSEPH CONRAD

I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.
JOSEPH CONRAD

Going home must be like going to render an account.
JOSEPH CONRAD

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

It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, wa...
JOSEPH CONRAD

For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed for it, for al...
JOSEPH CONRAD

I had turned away from the picture and was going back to the world where events move, men change, li...
JOSEPH CONRAD

The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.
JOSEPH CONRAD

They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritatin...
JOSEPH CONRAD

He lived then before me, he lived as much as he had ever lived---a shadow insatiable of splendid app...
JOSEPH CONRAD

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

It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow o...
JOSEPH CONRAD

It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.
JOSEPH CONRAD

Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in ev...
JOSEPH CONRAD

The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest outburst of cruelty and reckless greed kno...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Who knows what true loneliness is -- not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely t...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- bu...
JOSEPH CONRAD

An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the...
JOSEPH CONRAD

My weakness consists in not having a discriminating eye for the incidental --- for the externals, --...
JOSEPH CONRAD

The sky over Patusan was blood-red, immense, streaming like an open vein. An enormous sun nestled cr...
JOSEPH CONRAD

But the truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy known but to few on this Earth, and whom onl...
JOSEPH CONRAD

There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetness, which, in its universal exte...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Who could tell what forms, what visions, what faces, what forgiveness he could see in the glow of th...
JOSEPH CONRAD

It's extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts...
JOSEPH CONRAD

We live as we dream - alone.
JOSEPH CONRAD

Strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.
JOSEPH CONRAD

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

They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything.
JOSEPH CONRAD

I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make d...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Having had to encounter single-handed during his period of eclipse many physical dangers, he was wel...
JOSEPH CONRAD

For the great mass of mankind, the only saving grace needed is a steady fidelity to what is nearest ...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Being a woman is a terribly difficult task since it consists principally in dealing with men.
JOSEPH CONRAD

I don't like work... but I like what is in work -- the chance to find yourself. Your own reality -- ...
JOSEPH CONRAD

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

There is a weird power in a spoken word. . . . And a word carries far--very far--deals destruction t...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. I have been for many years a teacher of lang...
JOSEPH CONRAD

You perceive the force of a word. He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right arg...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put its trust in li...
JOSEPH CONRAD

I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more --the feeling that I could la...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear.
JOSEPH CONRAD

Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love--and to put its trust in lif...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Above all, we must forgive the unhappy souls who have elected to make the pilgrimage on foot, who sk...
JOSEPH CONRAD

You can't, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty...
JOSEPH CONRAD

There are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; ea...
JOSEPH CONRAD

A modern fleet of ships does not so much make use of the sea as exploit a highway.
JOSEPH CONRAD

Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it.
JOSEPH CONRAD

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different com...
JOSEPH CONRAD

The sea - this truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage,...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.
JOSEPH CONRAD

This is glorious!' I cried, and then i looked at the sinner by my side. He sat with his head sunk on...
JOSEPH CONRAD

I am stupid, am I not? What more can I want? If you ask them who is brave--who is true--who is just-...
JOSEPH CONRAD

He struggled with himself, too. I saw it -- I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul th...
JOSEPH CONRAD

We wander in our thousands over the
face of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, earning...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.
JOSEPH CONRAD

She had said he had been driven away from her by a dream...
JOSEPH CONRAD

I ask myself whether his rush had really carried him out of that mist in which he loomed interesting...
JOSEPH CONRAD

...in our own hearts we trust for our salvation, in the men that
surround us, in the sights t...
JOSEPH CONRAD

This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompaniment to my meditations.
JOSEPH CONRAD

There is a weird power in a spoken word.
JOSEPH CONRAD

We wander in our thousands over the
face of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, earning...
JOSEPH CONRAD

How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectr...
JOSEPH CONRAD

In the destructive element immerse.
JOSEPH CONRAD

We return to face our superiors, our kindred, our friends--- those whom we obey, and those whom we l...
JOSEPH CONRAD

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

Men act badly sometimes without being much worse than others,
JOSEPH CONRAD

Youth is insolent; it is its right – its necessity; it has got to assert itself, and all assertion...
JOSEPH CONRAD

And after all, one does not die of it." "Die of what?" I asked swiftly. "Of being afraid.
JOSEPH CONRAD

And a word carries far-very far-deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through spac...
JOSEPH CONRAD

It's extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to mak...
JOSEPH CONRAD

It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible,...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Never test another man by your own weakness.
JOSEPH CONRAD

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

My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to mak...
JOSEPH CONRAD

It was a dark story.
JOSEPH CONRAD

Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall.
JOSEPH CONRAD

And yet is not mankind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and its ...
JOSEPH CONRAD

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary: men alone are quite capable of every ...
JOSEPH CONRAD

It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them o...
JOSEPH CONRAD

I don't like work no man does but I like what is in the work the chance to find yourself
JOSEPH CONRAD

I can't imagine a human being so hard up for something to do as to quarrel with me
JOSEPH CONRAD

The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intellige...
JOSEPH CONRAD

[Even geniuses get the blues.] The more I write the less substance I see in my work, ... It is toler...
JOSEPH CONRAD

English saved my life.
JOSEPH CONRAD

In the film, I am very much present. Gabrielle has something in common with Madame Bovary - every po...
JOSEPH CONRAD

This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak.
JOSEPH CONRAD

As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his pr...
JOSEPH CONRAD

It's queer how out of touch with the truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there h...
JOSEPH CONRAD

This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on h...
JOSEPH CONRAD

He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.
JOSEPH CONRAD

The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depen...
JOSEPH CONRAD

All a man can betray is his conscience
JOSEPH CONRAD

He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The ...
JOSEPH CONRAD

I don't like work... but I like what is in work - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality - fo...
JOSEPH CONRAD

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

It is respectable to have no illusions - and safe - and profitable, and dull
JOSEPH CONRAD

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

Between the conception and the creationbetween the emotion and the responseFalls the shadow
JOSEPH CONRAD

He remembered that she was pretty, and, more, that she had a special grace in the intimacy of life. ...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Exterminate all brutes
JOSEPH CONRAD

The future is of our own making - and the most striking characteristic of the century is just that d...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Remember, Razumov, that women, children, and revolutionists hate irony, which is the negation of all...
JOSEPH CONRAD

No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s ex...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.
JOSEPH CONRAD

I wondered how far I should turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one's own personality ever...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Yes! Very funny this terrible thing is. A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls i...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you, s...
JOSEPH CONRAD

It was unearthly, and the men were--No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of...
JOSEPH CONRAD

In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a cont...
JOSEPH CONRAD

An author writes only half the book. The rest is written by readers.
JOSEPH CONRAD

The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it...
JOSEPH CONRAD

All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell, since I am trying to interpret for you in...
JOSEPH CONRAD

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestio...
JOSEPH CONRAD

The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil water-way leading to the uttermost...
JOSEPH CONRAD

There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembod...
JOSEPH CONRAD

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

It is respectable to have illusions - and safe - and profitable, and dull
JOSEPH CONRAD

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory
JOSEPH CONRAD

Don't talk to me of your Archimedes' lever. He was an absentminded person with a mathematical imagin...
JOSEPH CONRAD

The mind of man is capable of anything because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the ...
JOSEPH CONRAD

I had ambition not only to go farther than any man had ever been before, but as far as it was possib...
JOSEPH CONRAD

For every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early, and the human race come to a...
JOSEPH CONRAD

It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose
JOSEPH CONRAD

God is for men and religion is for women
JOSEPH CONRAD

I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more /the feeling that I could las...
JOSEPH CONRAD

It occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility
JOSEPH CONRAD

As to honor - you know - it's a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wa...
JOSEPH CONRAD

We live, as we dream alone
JOSEPH CONRAD

It was one of those dewy, clear, starry nights, oppressing our spirit, crushing our pride, by the brilliant evidence of the awful loneliness, of the hopeless obscure insignificance of our globe lost in the splendid revelation of a glittering, soulless universe.

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Joseph Conrad

It was one of those dewy, clear, starry nights, oppressing our spirit, crushing our pride, by the brilliant evidence of the awful loneliness, of the hopeless obscure insignificance of our globe lost in the splendid revelation of a glittering, soulless universe.

Joseph Conrad

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