Quote

I let him run on, this papier-maché Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.

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
Seemed
Nothing
Tried
Papier
Would
Inside
Forefinger
Maybe
Mach
Running
Mephistopheles
Littles
Poke
Loose
Find
Dirt
Little

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The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of Westerly Weather, is an impassive-faced tyrant with a sharp poniard held behind his back for a treacherous stab.
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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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The last thing a woman will consent to in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.
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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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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.
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The artist appeals to that part of our being...which is a gift and not an acquisition - and, therefore, more permanently enduring.
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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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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.
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All a man can betray is his conscience.
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I don't like work... but I like what is in work - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality - for yourself, not for others - which no other man can ever know.
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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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Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time.
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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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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.
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Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes.
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Being a lady is a frightfully troublesome assignment, since it comprises mainly in managing men.
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He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.
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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.
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All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
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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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