Quotes from Joseph Conrad

To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe.

La natura umana, temo, non è bellissima da cima a fondo.

Don't you know what the police are for, Stevie?  They are there so that them as have nothing shouldn't take anything away from them who have.

It does not matter; there's many a heavenly body in the lot crowding upon us of a night that mankind had never heard of, it being outside the sphere of its activities and of no earthly importance to anybody but to the astronomers who are paid to talk learnedly about its composition, weight, path--the irregularities of its conduct, the aberrations of its light--a sort of scientific scandal-mongering.

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.

Do you know how I would call the nature of the present economic conditions?  I would call it cannibalistic.  That's what it is!  They are nourishing their greed on the quivering flesh and the warm blood of the people—nothing else." Stevie swallowed the terrifying statement with an audible gulp, and at once, as though it had been swift poison, sank limply in a sitting posture on the steps of the kitchen door.

The calm was absolute, a dead, flat calm, the stillness of a dead sea and of a dead atmosphere.

It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time

Then the earth for you is only a standing place—and whether to be like this is your loss or your gain I won't pretend to say.

The field of influence was great and infinitely varied - once one had conquered a name.

There must be a wonderful soothing power in mere words since so many men have used them for self-communion. Being

The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest.

It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing, that feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy beetle crawled on—which was just what you wanted it to do. Where the pilgrims imagined it crawled to I don't know. To some place where they expected to get something, I bet! For me it crawled toward Kurtz—exclusively; but when the steam-pipes started leaking we crawled very slow.

Is there a spot on earth where such a man is unknown, an ominous survival testifying to the eternal fitness of lies and impudence?

The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At

Marlow ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddha. Nobody moved for a time. We have lost the first of the ebb, said the Director, suddenly. I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

You fellows know there are those voyages that seem ordered for the illustration of life, that might stand for a symbol of existence. You fight, work, sweat, nearly kill yourself, sometimes do kill yourself, trying to accomplish something — and you can't. Not from any fault of yours. You simply can do nothing, neither great nor little — not a thing in the world — not even marry an old maid, or get a wretched 600-ton cargo of coal to its port of destination.

It was, in the night, as though I had been faced by my own reflection in the depths of a somber and immense mirror.

Thinking is the great enemy of perfection. The habit of profound reflection, I am compelled to say, is the most pernicious of all the habits formed by the civilized man.

It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything

For the dead can live only with the exact intensity and quality of the life imparted to them by the living.

L'atmosfera di burocrazia ucciderebbe qualsiasi cosa respirasse aria di sforzo umano, estinguerebbe parimenti speranza e timore sotto la supremazia di carta e inchiostro.

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. . . . He

It was unreal as everything else--as the philanthropic pretense of the whole concern, as their government, as their show of work.