Quote

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

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Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.
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The artist in his calling of interpreter creates because he must. He is so much of a voice that, for him, silence is like death
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The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the privilege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautiful continuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection.
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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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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.
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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.
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For there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence.
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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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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.
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Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall.
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I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced
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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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You can't, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty.
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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.
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Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes.
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They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares.
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All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
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A man is a worker. If he is not that he is nothing.
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I am afraid that if you want to go down into history you'll have to do something for it.
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I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make dspair pause. For in truth, we who are creatures of impulse, are creatures of despair.
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