Quotes from Joseph Conrad

Es imposible transmitir las sensaciones vitales de cualquier momento dado de nuestra existencia, las sensaciones que le confieren veracidad y significado, su esencia sutil y penetrante. Es imposible. Vivimos igual que soñamos: solos…

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

su misterio, su grandeza, la asombrosa realidad de su vida oculta.

for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself...

It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary.

Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one into the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake of the ship; and the ship, lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her steadfast way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if scorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity. The nights descended on her like a benediction.

A cloud of unreality hangs about men, events, discourses, purposes.

He was different; innocent of heart, and full of good will, which nobody wanted, this castaway, that, like a man transplanted into another planet, was separated by an immense space from his past and by an immense ignorance from his future.

By all that's wonderful,it is the sea,I believe,the sea itself – or is it youth alone?Who can tell?But you here – you all had something out of life:money,love – whatever one gets on shore – and,tell me,wasn't that the best time,that time when we were young at sea;young and had nothing,on the sea that gives nothing,except hard knocks – and sometimes a chance to feel your strength – that only – what you all regret?

Me parece que estoy tratando de contar un sueño… que estoy haciendo un vano esfuerzo, porque el relato de un sueño no puede transmitir la sensación que produce esa mezcla de absurdo, de sorpresa y aturdimiento en un rumor de revuelta y rechazo, esa noción de ser capturados por lo increíble que es la misma esencia de los sueños.

The only secret of her life was her abject terror of the time when her husband would come home to stay for good.

And Mrs Verloc, in her varied experience, had come to the conclusion that some foreigners could speak better English than the natives.

I didn't know what he was playing up to—if he was playing up to anything at all—and I suspect he did not know either; for it is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.

But at the corner I stopped to take my last look at the crew of the Narcissus. They were swaying irresolute and noisy on the broad flagstones before the Mint. They were bound for the Black Horse, where men, in fur caps with brutal faces and in shirt sleeves, dispense out of varnished barrels the illusions of strength, mirth, happiness; the illusion of splendor and poetry of life, to the paid-off crews of southern-going ships.

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.

There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies—which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world—what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do.

Gli idealismi impoveriscono la vita. Il renderla bella significa toglierle il suo carattere complesso; significa rovinarla.

Las mentiras tienen cierto sabor fúnebre, guardan relación con la mortalidad.

Remontar ese río era como viajar a los comienzos de la creación, cuando la vegetación emergió a la tierra y los árboles fueron sus reyes.

La conquista de la tierra, que por lo general consiste en arrebatársela a quienes tienen una tez de color distinto o narices ligeramente más chatas que las nuestras, no es nada agradable cuando se observa con atención. Lo

It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes.

Mankind, asserted the Professor with a self-confident glitter of his iron-rimmed spectacles, does not know what it wants.

La palabra marfil se respiraba en el aire, se suspiraba en los murmullos, incluso, me imagino, aparecía en los ruegos al cielo.

you fellows had starved your imaginations to feed your bodies.