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The sea - this truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness - has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.

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
Must
Courage
Irresponsible
Consciousness
Endurance
Quality
Inequality
Literature
Display
Known
Generosity
Hardihood
Truth
Qualities
Confessed
Power
Touch
Faithfulness
Ever
Sea
Manly

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Violence is not a catalyst but a diversion.
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Being myself animated by feelings of affection toward my fellowmen, I am saddened by the modern system of advertising. Whatever evidence it offers of enterprise, ingenuity, impudence, and resource in certain individuals, it proves to my mind the wide prevalence of that form of mental degradation which is called gullibility.
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I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life.
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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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A word carries far, very far, deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space.
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Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time.
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There is something haunting in the light of the moon.
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And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose.
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It would take too long to explain the intimate alliance of contradictions in human nature which makes love itself wear at times the desperate shape of betrayal. And perhaps there is no possible explanation.
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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 something haunting in the light of the moon it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.
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Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end.
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She feared the unknown as we all do, and her ignorance made the unknown infinitely vast.
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Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes.
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There is a kind way of assisting our fellow-creatures which is enough to break their hearts while it saves their outer envelope.
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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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Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.
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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.
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I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.
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All a man can betray is his conscience.
Joseph Conrad