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All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

Joseph Conrad

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Joseph Conrad
Age: 66 †
Born: 1857
Born: December 3
Died: 1924
Died: August 3
Author
Autobiographer
Essayist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Berdichev
Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski
Credulity
Mankind
Upward
Feet
Ambitions
Literature
Climb
Climbs
Misery
Lawful
Ambition
Miseries
Except

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Do not talk to me of Archimedes' lever. He was an absent-minded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.
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Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy
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The last thing a woman will consent to in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.
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As to honor - you know - it's a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn't theirs.
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There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.
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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, and always mute with an air of whispering, Come and find out.
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Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines.
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To be busy with material affairs is the best preservative against reflection, fears, doubts ... all these things which stand in the way of achievement. I suppose a fellow proposing to cut his throat would experience a sort of relief while occupied in stropping his razor carefully.
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The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.
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Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing.
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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.
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A ship in dock, surrounded by quays and the walls of warehouses, has the appearance of a prisoner meditating upon freedom in the sadness of a free spirit put under restraint.
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Yet, when one thinks of it, diplomacy without force is a but a rotten reed to lean upon.
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A writing may be lost a lie may be written but what the eye has seen is truth and remains in the mind!
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Happiness, happiness ... the flavor is with you-with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you please.
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Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.
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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.
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We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs forever, but in the august light of abiding memories.
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Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall.
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The ocean has the conscienceless temper of a savage autocrat spoiled by much adulation
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