Quotes from Joseph Conrad

Mrs. Gould knew the history of the San Tomé mine. Worked in the early days mostly by means of lashes on the backs of slaves, its yield had been paid for in its own weight of human bones. Whole tribes of Indians had perished in the exploitation; and then the mine was abandoned, since with this primitive method it had ceased to make a profitable return, no matter how many corpses were thrown into its maw. Then it became forgotten.

To get a breath of fresh air. The expression sounded wonderfully odd, with its suggestion of sedentary desk life.

And the sense of security, even the most warranted, is a bad councillor.  It is the sense which, like that exaggerated feeling of well-being ominous of the coming on of madness, precedes the swift fall of disaster. 

The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas. Its hard, absolute optimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and intolerance it contains.

It was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage.

breathe dead hippo, so to speak, and not be contaminated.

there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny.

Charles Gould did not open his heart to her in any set speeches. He simply went on acting and thinking in her sight. This is the true method of sincerity.

river, small green flames, red flames, white flames, pursuing

Such book being there was wonderful enough; but still more astounding were the notes penciled in the margin and plainly referring to the text.

Like the foam of the depths of the sea, like the ripple on an unfathomable enigma, a mystery greater-- when I thought of it-- then the curious, inexplicable note of desperate grief in this savage clamour that had swept by us on the river bank, behind the blind whiteness of the fog

It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.

But passion most dissembles, yet betrays, Even by its darkness; as the blackest sky Foretells the heaviest tempest.

Our eyes were of no more use to us than if we had been buried miles deep in a heap of cotton-wool.

Had you been the Emperor of the East and West, you could not have ignored your inferiority in his presence.

By an exulting and terrible cry, by the cry of inconceivable triumph and unspeakable pain.

What saves us is efficiency—the devotion to efficiency.

He was too lazy even for a mere demagogue, for a workman orator, for a leader of labour. It was too much trouble. He required a more perfect form of ease; or it might have been that he was the victim of a philosophical unbelief in the effectivness of every human effort.

Al fin el tramo se abrió. Apareció una punta rocosa, montículos de tierra levantados en la orilla, casas tendidas en una colina, algunas con tejados metálicos, contra restos de excavaciones y declives.

Ave! Old knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant.

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.

camino se apartaba de los peñascos y torcía en presencia de un vagón de tren tirado boca abajo; una de sus ruedas faltaba, y reposaba como el cadáver de un animal desconocido

Todas sus costillas eran visibles y las articulaciones de sus miembros parecían nudos; y cada uno llevaba un collar de hierro, atados entre sí por una cadena que oscilaba en un tintinear rítmico.

There is something peculiar in a small boat upon the wide seas. Over the lives born from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness.