Quote

Some great men owe most of their greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for their tools the exact quality of strength that matters for their work.

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
Business
Exact
Matter
Matters
Greatness
Great
Tools
Work
Strength
Men
Quality
Literature
Ability
Detecting

More quotes by Joseph Conrad

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It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self knowledge.
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All a man can betray is his conscience.
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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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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.
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The artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition-and therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives to our sense of pity, and beauty and pain.
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Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.
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We couldn't understand because we were too far... and could not remember because we were traveling in the night of first ages, those ages that had gone, leaving hardly a sign... and no memories.
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Danger lies in the writer becoming the victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity, and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too blunt for his purpose -- as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent emotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to sniveling and giggles.
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My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.
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I was constantly watching myself, my secret self, as dependent on my actions as my own personality
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There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies.
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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.
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Going home must be like going to render an account.
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You can't breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, and at the same time keep your precarious grip on existence.
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Violence is not a catalyst but a diversion.
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Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put its trust in life.
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Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing.
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I can't imagine a human being so hard up for something to do as to quarrel with me.
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Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off.
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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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