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. - Joseph Conrad
In a dispassionate view the ardour for reform, improvement for virtue, for knowledge, and even beauty is only a vein sticking up for appearances as though one were anxious about the cut of ones clothes in a community of blind men. - Joseph Conrad
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. - Joseph Conrad
Who could tell what forms, what visions, what faces, what forgiveness he could see in the glow of the west! - Joseph Conrad
What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it. - Joseph Conrad
But the truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy known but to few on this Earth, and whom only the simplest of us are fit to withstand. The brilliant Costaguanaro of the boulevards had died from solitude and want of faith in himself and others. - Joseph Conrad
There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind. - Joseph Conrad
Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear - Joseph Conrad
Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall. - Joseph Conrad
I would just as soon have abused the old village church at home for not being a cathedral. - 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 despair pause. For in truth we who are creatures of impulse are creatures of despair. - Joseph Conrad
I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace. - Joseph Conrad
They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything. - Joseph Conrad
The man up there raged aloud in two languages, and with a sincerity in his fury that almost convinced me I had, in some way, sinned against the harmony of the universe - Joseph Conrad
A estrada seria longa. Todas as estradas que levam ao que o nosso coração almeja são longas - Joseph Conrad
Liberty of imagination should be the most precious possession of a novelist. To try voluntarily to discover the fettering dogmas of its own inspiration, is a trick worthy of humna perverseness which, after inventing an absurdity, endeavours to find for it a pedigree of distinguished ancestors... - Joseph Conrad
Strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. - Joseph Conrad
Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it. - Joseph Conrad
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. - Joseph Conrad
Du calme, du calme, adieu. - Joseph Conrad
All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind. - Joseph Conrad
The conquest of the earth... is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only... not a sentimental pretense but an idea. - Joseph Conrad
The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future. - Joseph Conrad
The question is not how to get cured, but how to live. - Joseph Conrad
The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history. - Joseph Conrad
Being a woman is a terribly difficult task since it consists principally in dealing with men. - Joseph Conrad
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
Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end. - Joseph Conrad
For the great mass of mankind, the only saving grace needed is a steady fidelity to what is nearest to hand and heart for the short moment of each human effort. - Joseph Conrad
But when one is young one must see things, gather experience, ideas; enlarge the mind. - Joseph Conrad
All a man can betray is his conscience. - Joseph Conrad
The conquest of the earth is not a pretty thing. - Joseph Conrad
Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it. - Joseph Conrad
We live as we dream - alone. - Joseph Conrad
Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men. - Joseph Conrad
He remembered that she was pretty, and, more, that she had a special grace in the intimacy of life. She had the secret of individuality which excites and escapes. - Joseph Conrad