Joseph Conrad quotes - page 3

My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see. (Joseph Conrad)
Going home must be like going to render an account. View quote
Joseph Conrad
He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense. View quote
Joseph Conrad
All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind. View quote
Joseph Conrad
A droll thing life isthat mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself and that comes too late. View quote
Joseph Conrad
He struggled with himself, too. I saw it -- I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself. View quote
Joseph Conrad
But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad. View quote
Joseph Conrad
The question is not how to get cured, but how to live. View quote
Joseph Conrad
It's extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome. View quote
Joseph Conrad
He hated all this, and somehow he couldn't get away. View quote
Joseph Conrad
It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice. (Joseph Conrad)
We live in the flicker -- may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. View quote
Joseph Conrad
We can never cease to be ourselves. View quote
Joseph Conrad
Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall. View quote
Joseph Conrad
Never test another man by your own weakness. View quote
Joseph Conrad
I let him run on, this papier-maché Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe. View quote
Joseph Conrad
They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares. View quote
Joseph Conrad
And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. View quote
Joseph Conrad
The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil water-way leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness. View quote
Joseph Conrad
Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes. View quote
Joseph Conrad
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. (Joseph Conrad)
In plucking the fruit of memory one runs the risk of spoiling its bloom. View quote
Joseph Conrad
Having had to encounter single-handed during his period of eclipse many physical dangers, he was well aware of the most dangerous element common to them all: of the crushing, paralyzing sense of human littleness, which is what really defeats a man struggling with natural forces, alone, far from the eyes of his fellows. View quote
Joseph Conrad
Let a fool be made serviceable according to his folly. View quote
Joseph Conrad
The truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy known but to few on this Earth, and whom only the simplest of us are fit to withstand. The brilliant Costaguanaro of the boulevards had died from solitude and want of faith in himself and others. View quote
Joseph Conrad