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Violence is not a catalyst but a diversion.

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
Diversion
Catalyst
Violence

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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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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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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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A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.
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To be a great autocrat you must be a great barbarian.
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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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And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose.
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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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Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.
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As a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement.
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Happiness, happiness ... the flavor is with you-with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you please.
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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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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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In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent.
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Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praiseworthy sincerity which, while it delivers one into the hands of one's enemies, is as likely as not to embroil one with one's friends.
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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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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 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.
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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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