Joseph Conrad

“I don't like work... but I like what is in work - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality - for yourself, not for others - which no other man can ever know.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Work #Reality #Men

“I slipped the book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Book #Reading #Pockets

“You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Lying #Hate #Bears

“Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Funny #Hilarious #Women

“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Inspirational #Men #Evil

“I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Peace #Men #Relaxation

“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.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Struggle #Soul #Saws

“They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force--nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Weakness #Want #Brute Force

“The mind of man is capable of anything.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Heart #Men #Mind

“The atmosphere of officialdom would kill anything that breathes the air of human endeavour, would extinguish hope and fear alike in the supremacy of paper and ink.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Air #Atmosphere #Ink

“History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Song #Art #History

“All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Ambition #Feet #Literature

“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.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Wisdom #Intelligence #Want

“I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude - and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Thinking #Solitude

“We live as we dream--alone....”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Love #Dream #Dreamer

“Your strength is just an accident owed to the weakness of others.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Strength #Weakness #Accidents

“His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain -- why he did not instantly disappear.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Problem #Disappear #Inexplicable

“Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Art #Lines #Should

“You must squeeze out of yourself every sensation, every thought, every image, - mercilessly, without reserve and without remorse: you must search the darkest corners of your heart, the most remote recesses of your brain, - you must search them for the image, for the glamour, for the right expression. And you must do it sincerely, at any cost: you must do it so that at the end of your day's work you should feel exhausted, emptied of every sensation and every thought, with a blank mind and an aching heart, with the notion that there is nothing, - nothing left in you.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Heart #Expression #Brain

“... it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Struggle #Choices #Loyal

“We can never cease to be ourselves.”
-- Joseph Conrad

“Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Grief #Apathy #May

“Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Art #Writing #Life Is Short

“They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Stupid #Perfect #Laughing

“Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Wise #Men #Fool

“A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Writing #Men #Fellow Man

“The true peace of God begins at any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Ocean #Land #Miles

“I have wrestled with death. 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 atmostphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Victory #Desire #Belief

“What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow men's existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history.”
-- Joseph Conrad

#Strong #Pride #Reality

“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.”
-- Joseph Conrad