Quotes from Joseph Conrad

one moment and bright the next. When the manager, escorted by the pilgrims, all of them armed to the teeth, had gone to the house, this chap came on board. 'I say, I don't like this. These natives are in the bush,' I said. He assured me earnestly it was all right. 'They are simple

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.

We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there—there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—this suspicion

He must meet that truth with his own true stuff—with his own inborn strength. Principles? Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags—rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief.

Ja sabeu que odio, detesto, no suporto la mentida, i no perquè sigui més íntegre que vosaltres, sinó simplement perquè m'horroritza. A les mentides hi ha un tint de mort, un regust de mortalitat - exactament el que més odio del món - una cosa que vull oblidar. Em fa sentir malalt i miserable, com si mossegués alguna cosa putrefacta. Qüestió de temperament, suposo.

This is Nature - the balance of colossal forces... the mighty Cosmos in perfect equilibrium produces - this...sometimes it seems to me that man is come where he is not wanted...why should he run about here and there, talking about the stars, disturbing the blades of grass? from Lord Jim

But when one is young one must see things, gather experience, ideas; enlarge the mind.

I went a little farther, then still a little farther - till I had gone so far that I don't know how I'll ever get back.

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.

how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammelled feet may take him into by the way of solitude-utter solitude without a policeman-by the way of silence-utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbor can be heard whispering of public opinion? These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness.

I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness.

As is often the case with lawless natures, Ricardo's faith in any given individual was of a simple, unquestioning character. For man must have some support in life.

It was another of Nostromo's triumphs, the greatest, the most enviable, the most sinister of all. In that true cry of undying passion that seemed to ring aloud from Punta Mala to Azuera and away to the bright line of the horizon, overhung by a big white cloud shining like a mass of solid silver, the genius of the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores dominated the dark gulf containing his conquests of treasure and love.

They were dying slowly - it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now - nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest.

the weakness of many tellers of tales who seem so often unaware of what their audience would best like to hear;

True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible.

sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart,—its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life.

And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory-like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment.

They will be bound to make some arrests, he thought, with something resembling virtuous indignation, for the even tenor of his revolutionary life was menaced by no fault of his.

My answer is that if it be true that every novel contains an element of autobiography—and this can hardly be denied, since the creator can only express himself in his creation—then there are some of us to whom an open display of sentiment is repugnant.

leading questions as to my acquaintances in the sepulchral city, and so on. His little eyes glittered

Jim's father possessed such certain knowledge of the Unknowable as made for the righteousness of people in cottages without disturbing the ease of mind of those whom an unerring Providence enables to live in mansions.

The men we met walked past, slow, unsmiling, with downcast eyes, as if the melancholy of a over-burdened earth had weighted their feet, bowed their shoulders, borne down their glances

A horn tooted to the right, and I saw the black people run.