Quote

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.

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
Humans
Breathe
Extinguish
Would
Air
Breathes
Kill
Ink
Paper
Endeavour
Hope
Supremacy
Fear
Bureaucracy
Anything
Alike
Human
Atmosphere

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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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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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Books may be written in all sorts of places. Verbal inspiration may enter the berth of a mariner on board a ship frozen fast in a river in the middle of a town.
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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.
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It would take too long to explain the intimate alliance of contradictions in human nature which makes love itself wear at times the desperate shape of betrayal. And perhaps there is no possible explanation.
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A fool has more ideas than a wise man can foresee.
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The ocean has the conscienceless temper of a savage autocrat spoiled by much adulation
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The good author is he who contemplates without marked joy or excessive sorrow the adventures of his soul amongst criticisms.
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Necessity, they say, is mother of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions.
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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.
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A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.
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The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil water-way leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.
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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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Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put its trust in life.
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Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.
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As to honor - you know - it's a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn't theirs.
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It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.
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All creative art is magic , is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising, for the edification of mankind , pinned down by the conditions of its existence to the earnest consideration of the most insignificant tides of reality .
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History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.
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Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets.
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