Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) was a Polish-British novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language; though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he came to be regarded a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature.
Here is a collection of Joseph Conrad most inspiring quotes: Joseph Conrad quotes about books, writing and knowledge. Joseph Conrad quotes on work, dream & women. Quotes and sayings about life, death and the sea by Joseph Conrad.
Joseph Conrad Quotes and Sayings
Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade, since it consists principally of dealings with men.
It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.
It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.
My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel - it is, before all, to make you see.
We live as we dream - alone.
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank - but that's not the same thing.
Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it.
I don't like work - no man does - but I like what is in the work - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality - for yourself not for others - what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.
We live as we dream - alone. While the dream disappears, the life continues painfully.
Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.
He struggled with himself, too. I saw it - I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.
No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life - sensation of any given epoch of one's existence - that which makes its truth, its meaning - its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream - alone.
We live in the flicker - may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday.
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.
You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget.
The mind of man is capable of anything.
Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence - but more generally takes the form of apathy.
But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad.
Like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker.
The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.
Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.
It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.
It's extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome.
We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.
His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain - why he did not instantly disappear.
Of all the inanimate objects, of all men's creations, books are the nearest to us for they contain our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to the truth, and our persistent leanings to error. But most of all they resemble us in their precious hold on life.
The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.
The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future.
Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.
Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear.
Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.
I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life.
Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you, smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, "Come and find out".
He hated all this, and somehow he couldn't get away.
They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force - nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.
You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.
We can never cease to be ourselves.
There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.
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.
In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility.
Never test another man by your own weakness.
I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced.
Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall.
They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares.
My task is to make you hear, to make you feel,and, above all, to make you see. That is all, and it is everything.
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?
One can't live with one's finger everlastingly on one's pulse.
Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word.. but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory.. or some illusion.
'And this also,' said Marlow suddenly, 'has been one of the dark places of the earth.'
There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget.
I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go.
Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes.
His face was like the autumn sky, overcast one moment and bright the next.
I saw him open his mouth wide... as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him.
For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world of straightforward facts; but the feeling would not last long. Something would turn up to scare it away.
All that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men.
Everything belonged to him - but that was a trifle. The thing to know was what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.
Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.
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.
A writing may be lost; a lie may be written; but what the eye has seen is truth and remains in the mind!
To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.
I am afraid that if you want to go down into history you'll have to do something for it.
I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance.
All idealisation makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity - it is to destroy it.
A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavor to do, he drowns.
Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off.
Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put it's trust in life!
Men act badly sometimes without being much worse than others.
To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.
I suppose everybody must be always just a little homesick.
Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.
The man who says that he has no illusions has at least that one.
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.
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