Quote

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.

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
Grand
Inviting
Thinking
Ships
Whispering
Like
Watching
Savage
Air
Smiling
Find
Savages
Frowning
Slips
Insipid
Come
Coast
Enigma
Mean
Ship
Mute
Always

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Yet, when one thinks of it, diplomacy without force is a but a rotten reed to lean upon.
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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.
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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.
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A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea.
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A ship in dock, surrounded by quays and the walls of warehouses, has the appearance of a prisoner meditating upon freedom in the sadness of a free spirit put under restraint.
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He hated all this, and somehow he couldn't get away.
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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.
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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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Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end.
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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.
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There is a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride, beyond mere skill, almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art - which is art.
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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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I like what is in the work -- the chance to find yourself.
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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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Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.
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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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Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy
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There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind.
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