Quote

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.

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
Truth
Wear
Conceive
Mind
Aspect
Convenience
Men
View
Arrangements
World
Views
Disorder
Unwearied
Effort
Efforts
Conveniences
Small
Vast
Dismal
Moment
Thanks
Arrangement
Moments
Seemed
Sunny

More quotes by Joseph Conrad

Image
As a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement.
Joseph Conrad
Image
Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off.
Joseph Conrad
Image
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.
Joseph Conrad
Image
Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time.
Joseph Conrad
Image
All one's work might have been better done but this is a sort of reflection a worker must put aside courageously if he doesn't mean every one of his conceptions to remain forever a private vision, an evanescent reverie.
Joseph Conrad
Image
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.
Joseph Conrad
Image
We can never cease to be ourselves.
Joseph Conrad
Image
The hair of his face, on the contrary, carroty and flaming, resembled a growth of copper wire clipped short to the line of the lip while, no matter how close he shaved, fiery metallic gleams passed, when he moved his head, over the surface of his cheeks.
Joseph Conrad
Image
Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted.
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
You can't, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty.
Joseph Conrad
Image
This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it but man will never on his heap of mud keep still.
Joseph Conrad
Image
It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull.
Joseph Conrad
Image
The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of Westerly Weather, is an impassive-faced tyrant with a sharp poniard held behind his back for a treacherous stab.
Joseph Conrad
Image
I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make dspair pause. For in truth, we who are creatures of impulse, are creatures of despair.
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
We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs forever, but in the august light of abiding memories.
Joseph Conrad
Image
There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies.
Joseph Conrad
Image
Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.
Joseph Conrad
Image
Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing.
Joseph Conrad