Quote

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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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
Ideas
Look
Redeems
Pretence
Looks
Conquest
Thing
Sentimental
Much
Pretty
Idea
Earth

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I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life.
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I am afraid that if you want to go down into history you'll have to do something for it.
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It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull.
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Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end.
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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.
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It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.
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A ship in dock, surrounded by quays and the walls of warehouses, has the appearance of a prisoner meditating upon freedom in the sadness of a free spirit put under restraint.
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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.
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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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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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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!
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There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind.
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For there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence.
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Follow your bliss. Find where it is and don't be afraid to follow it.
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... it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.
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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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A train of thought is never false. The falsehood lies deep in the necessities of existence.
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Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy
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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.
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I like what is in the work -- the chance to find yourself.
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