Quote

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

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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
Life
Change
Sea
Port
Used
Sun
Stretch
Wells
Trade
Sail
Book
Bits
Finest
Well
Land
Commercial
Must
Books
Cooking
Much
Interest
Interests
Spoiling
Would
War
Legs
Nicer

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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.
Joseph Conrad
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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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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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Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.
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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.
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A nickname may be the best record of a success. That's what I call putting the face of a joke upon the body of a truth.
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Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.
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The artist appeals to that part of our being...which is a gift and not an acquisition - and, therefore, more permanently enduring.
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My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.
Joseph Conrad
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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.
Joseph Conrad
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Lights of ships moved in the fairway-a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.
Joseph Conrad
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That's why love is so inseparable from any talk about truth and death, because we know that love is fundamentally a death of an old self that was isolated and the emergence of a new self now entangled with another self, the self that you fall in love with.
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As a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement.
Joseph Conrad
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They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience.
Joseph Conrad
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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.
Joseph Conrad
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Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines.
Joseph Conrad
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It’s extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it’s just as well and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome.
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You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
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She feared the unknown as we all do, and her ignorance made the unknown infinitely vast.
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The sea - this truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness - has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.
Joseph Conrad