Quote

Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets.

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
Thing
Mysterious
Inextinguishable
Life
Logic
Merciless
Regret
Crop
Late
Futile
Knowledge
Arrangement
Purpose
Crops
Hope
Regrets
Comes
Arrangements
Droll

More quotes by Joseph Conrad

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I saw him open his mouth wide. . . as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him.
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The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come and wait for the turn of the tide.
Joseph Conrad
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She feared the unknown as we all do, and her ignorance made the unknown infinitely vast.
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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
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Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praiseworthy sincerity which, while it delivers one into the hands of one's enemies, is as likely as not to embroil one with one's friends.
Joseph Conrad
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All a man can betray is his conscience.
Joseph Conrad
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Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.
Joseph Conrad
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Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin.
Joseph Conrad
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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.
Joseph Conrad
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Everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places.
Joseph Conrad
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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.
Joseph Conrad
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I can't imagine a human being so hard up for something to do as to quarrel with me.
Joseph Conrad
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Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines.
Joseph Conrad
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The vision seemed to enter the house with me-the stretcher, the phantom-bearers, the wild crowd of obedient worshippers, the gloom of the forests, the glitter of the reach between the murky bends, the beat of the drum, regular and muffled like the beating of a heart-the heart of a conquering darkness.
Joseph Conrad
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The ocean has the conscienceless temper of a savage autocrat spoiled by much adulation
Joseph Conrad
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There is something haunting in the light of the moon.
Joseph Conrad
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Going home must be like going to render an account.
Joseph Conrad
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That faculty of beholding at a hint the face of his desire and the shape of his dream, without which the earth would know no lover and no adventurer.
Joseph Conrad
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It is not Justice the servant of men, but accident, hazard, Fortune-the ally of patient Time-that holds an even and scrupulous balance.
Joseph Conrad
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But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad.
Joseph Conrad