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A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

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
Writer
Interest
Without
Writing
Foibles
Men
Conceivable
Sympathy
Fellow
Fellows

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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.
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Danger lies in the writer becoming the victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity, and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too blunt for his purpose -- as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent emotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to sniveling and giggles.
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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.
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Kisses are the remnants of paradise.
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There is a kind way of assisting our fellow-creatures which is enough to break their hearts while it saves their outer envelope.
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Some of us, regarding the ocean with understanding and affection, have seen it looking old, as if the immemorial ages had been stirred up from the undisturbed bottom of ooze. For it is a gale of wind that makes the sea look old.
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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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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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Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall.
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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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In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility.
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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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For a moment I had a view of a world that seemed to wear a vast and dismal aspect of disorder, while, in truth, thanks to our unwearied efforts, it is as sunny an arrangement of small conveniences as the mind of man can conceive.
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Necessity, they say, is mother of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions.
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Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.
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Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.
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I was constantly watching myself, my secret self, as dependent on my actions as my own personality
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I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine.
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All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
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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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