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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
Inside
Forefinger
Maybe
Mach
Running
Mephistopheles
Littles
Poke
Find
Loose
Little
Dirt
Nothing
Seemed
Would
Tried
Papier
More quotes by Joseph Conrad
Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.
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Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear.
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He hated all this, and somehow he couldn't get away.
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There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies.
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Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.
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All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising.
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Things and men have always a certain sense, a certain side by which they must be got hold of if one wants to obtain a solid grasp and a perfect command.
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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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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.
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The conquest of the earth... is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only... not a sentimental pretence but an idea.
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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.
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It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog.
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A writing may be lost a lie may be written but what the eye has seen is truth and remains in the mind!
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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.
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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.
Joseph Conrad
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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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.
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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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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.
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