Quote

Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time.

Joseph Conrad

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Funny
Nautical
Inspirational
Yacht
Men
Sailing
Time
Sail
Boat
Carry
Fool
Wise
Shorten

More quotes by Joseph Conrad

Image
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.
Joseph Conrad
Image
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.
Joseph Conrad
Image
All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
Joseph Conrad
Image
The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the privilege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautiful continuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection.
Joseph Conrad
Image
In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent.
Joseph Conrad
Image
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.
Joseph Conrad
Image
What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow men's existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history.
Joseph Conrad
Image
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.
Joseph Conrad
Image
the mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future
Joseph Conrad
Image
It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun.
Joseph Conrad
Image
We can never cease to be ourselves.
Joseph Conrad
Image
For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world of straightforward facts but the feeling would not last long. Something would turn up to scare it away.
Joseph Conrad
Image
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.
Joseph Conrad
Image
One wonders that there can be found a man courageous enough to occupy the post. It is a matter of meditation. Having given it a few minutes I come to the conclusion in the serenity of my heart and the peace of my conscience that he must be either an extreme megalomaniac or an utterly unconscious being.
Joseph Conrad
Image
Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart - its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life.
Joseph Conrad
Image
As to honor - you know - it's a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn't theirs.
Joseph Conrad
Image
Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted.
Joseph Conrad
Image
Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put its trust in life.
Joseph Conrad
Image
Let a fool be made serviceable according to his folly.
Joseph Conrad
Image
You can't breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, and at the same time keep your precarious grip on existence.
Joseph Conrad