Quotes from Joseph Conrad

I have the means to make myself deadly, but that by itself, you understand, is absolutely nothing in the way of protection. What is effective is the belief those people have in my will to use the means. That's their impression. It's absolute. Therefore I am deadly.

Droll thing life is — that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself — that comes too late — a crop of unextinguishable regrets.

Art itself my be defined as a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe.

Tal vez toda la diferencia estribe en eso; tal vez toda la sabiduaría, toda la verdad, toda la sinceridad, están comprimidas en aquel inapreciable momento de tiempo en el que atravesamos el umbral de lo invisible.

Then the vision of an enormous town presented itself, of a monstrous town more populous than some continents and in its man-mad might as if indifferent to heaven's frowns and smiles; a cruel devourer of the world's light. There was room enough there to place any story, depth enough there for any passion, variety enough there for any setting, darkness enough there to bury five millions of lives.

Jim started, and his answer was full of deference; but the odious and fleshy figure, as though seen for the first time in a revealing moment, fixed itself in his memory for ever as the incarnation of everything vile and base that lurks in the world we love: in our own hearts we trust for our salvation, in the men that surround us, in the sights that fill our eyes, in the sounds that fill our ears, and in the air that fills our lungs.

Then the vision of an enormous town presented itself, of a monstrous town more populous than some continents and in its man-made might as if indifferent to heaven's frowns and smiles; a cruel devourer of the world's light. There was room enough there to place any story, depth enough there for any passion, variety enough there for any setting, darkness enough there to bury five millions of lives.

being only overcome by his dislike of all kinds of recognised labour—a temperamental defect which he shared with a large proportion of revolutionary reformers of a given social state.

Now and then a small red glow would move abruptly, and expanding light up the fingers of a languid hand, part of a face in profound repose, or flash a crimson gleam into a pair of pensive eyes overshadowed by a fragment of an unruffled forehead: and with the very first word uttered Marlow's body, extended at rest in the seat, would become very still, as though his spirit had winged its way back into the lapse of time and were speaking through his lips from the past.

They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything

We live as we dream--alone...." ? Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and the Congo Diary

I could be eloquent were I not afraid you fellows had starved your imaginations to feed your bodies.

History is made by men, but they do not make it in their heads.

The point was in his being a gifted creature, and that of all his gifts the one that stood out pre-eminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence, was his ability to talk, his words—the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness.

above—the Council in Europe, you know—mean him to be.' He turned to

Love and regret go hand in hand in this world of changes swifter than the shifting of the clouds reflected in the mirror of the sea.

A clean slate, did he say? As if the initial word of each our destiny were not graven in imperishable characters upon the face of a rock.

No hay miedo que pueda hacer frente al hambre, no hay paciencia que la soporte, el asco simplemente no existe donde el hambre es; y en cuanto a las supersticiones, creencias, todo eso que ustedes llamarían principios, son menos que paja enfrentada a la brisa.

Les mots, vous le savez, sont les plus grands ennemis de la réalité.

Their character is built upon conventional morality. It leans on the social order. Mine stands free from everything artificial. Le They are bound in all sorts of conventions. They depend on life, which, in this connexion, is a historical fact surrounded by all sorts of restraints and considerations, a complex, organized fact open to attack at every point; whereas I depend on death, which knows no restraints and cannot be attached. My superiority is evident.

se diría que capaces de hacer caer sobre alguien una mirada tan cortante y pesada como un hacha.

it occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility.

Let her go. To-morrow I shall forget. I am a firm man, . . . firm as a . . . rock, . . . firm . . .

Originea sa cea mai direct? se afla în declaraÈ›ia c? era un rus. Orice aÈ™tepta el de la via?? urma s? i se dea, ori s? i se refuze, doar prin aceast? filiaÈ›ie. Imensa familie suferea acum din cauza disensiunilor interne, iar el se sustr?gea mental din diferend, aÈ™a cum orice om de bun-simÈ› s-ar abÈ›ine de la a lua partea cuiva într-o violent? ceart? de familie.