Quote

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.

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
Purpose
Sea
Invested
Problem
Choice
Presenting
Great
Problems
Appeal
Straightforwardness
Life
Security
Compared
Disquieting
Land
Appeals
Rejoiced
Beauty
Absolutes
Singleness
Choices
Absolute
Unrest
Moral
Suddenly
Elementary

More quotes by Joseph Conrad

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Kisses are the remnants of paradise.
Joseph Conrad
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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.
Joseph Conrad
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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
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We couldn't understand because we were too far... and could not remember because we were traveling in the night of first ages, those ages that had gone, leaving hardly a sign... and no memories.
Joseph Conrad
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Happiness, happiness ... the flavor is with you-with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you please.
Joseph Conrad
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... it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.
Joseph Conrad
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Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.
Joseph Conrad
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Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.
Joseph Conrad
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Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted.
Joseph Conrad
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The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement - but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims.
Joseph Conrad
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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.
Joseph Conrad
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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
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A train of thought is never false. The falsehood lies deep in the necessities of existence.
Joseph Conrad
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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.
Joseph Conrad
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Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy!
Joseph Conrad
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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.
Joseph Conrad
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Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.
Joseph Conrad
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An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.
Joseph Conrad
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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.
Joseph Conrad
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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.
Joseph Conrad