Quote

This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it but man will never on his heap of mud keep still.

Joseph Conrad

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Stills
Mud
Still
Sits
Littles
Insects
Little
Butterfly
Never
Dirt
Men
Magnificent
Finds
Keep
Heap

More quotes by Joseph Conrad

Image
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.
Joseph Conrad
Image
It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing, that feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy beetle crawled on - which was just what you wanted it to do.
Joseph Conrad
Image
For a moment I had a view of a world that seemed to wear a vast and dismal aspect of disorder, while, in truth, thanks to our unwearied efforts, it is as sunny an arrangement of small conveniences as the mind of man can conceive.
Joseph Conrad
Image
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.
Joseph Conrad
Image
The artist appeals to that part of our being...which is a gift and not an acquisition - and, therefore, more permanently enduring.
Joseph Conrad
Image
Nowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks, and months fall away quicker into the past. They seem to be left astern as easily as the light air-bubbles in the swirls of the ship's wake.
Joseph Conrad
Image
Ah! These commercial interests -- spoiling the finest life under the sun. Why must the sea be used for trade -- and for war as well?...It would have been so much nicer just to sail about, with here and there a port and a bit of land to stretch one's legs on, buy a few books and get a change of cooking for a while.
Joseph Conrad
Image
Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it.
Joseph Conrad
Image
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.
Joseph Conrad
Image
It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun.
Joseph Conrad
Image
We can never cease to be ourselves.
Joseph Conrad
Image
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
Image
Yet, when one thinks of it, diplomacy without force is a but a rotten reed to lean upon.
Joseph Conrad
Image
Lights of ships moved in the fairway-a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.
Joseph Conrad
Image
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
Image
Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin.
Joseph Conrad
Image
Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy
Joseph Conrad
Image
The condemned social order has not been built up on paper and ink, and I don't fancy that a combination of paper and ink will ever put an end to it.
Joseph Conrad
Image
For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed for it, for all the celebrations it has been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.
Joseph Conrad
Image
Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.
Joseph Conrad