Quotes from Joseph Conrad

I had ambition not only to go farther than any man had ever been before, but as far as it was possible for a man to go.

There are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some fable of strife to be forgotten - before the end is told - even if there happens to be any end to it.

Your strength is just an accident owed to the weakness of others.

Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life.

Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off.

We owe much to the fruitful meditation of our sages, but a sane view of life is, after all, elaborated mainly in the kitchen.

Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please.

A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea.

The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.

It is a maudlin and indecent verity that comes out through the strength of wine.

A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

I am a great foe of favoritism in public life, in private life, and even in the delicate relationship of an author to his works.

A train of thought is never false. The falsehood lies deep in the necessities of existence.

I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life.

Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.

How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a specter through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?

To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.

A word carries far, very far, deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space.

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.

It is not Justice the servant of men, but accident, hazard, Fortune-the ally of patient Time-that holds an even and scrupulous balance.

You can't breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, and at the same time keep your precarious grip on existence.

For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world of straightforward facts; but the feeling would not last long. Something would turn up to scare it away.

He remembered that she was pretty, and, more, that she had a special grace in the intimacy of life. She had the secret of individuality which excites and escapes.

We live as we dream - alone.