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I was constantly watching myself, my secret self, as dependent on my actions as my own personality

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
Self
Dependent
Actions
Constantly
Watching
Personality
Secret
Action

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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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As to honor - you know - it's a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn't theirs.
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Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes.
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Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.
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A task, any task, undertaken in an adventurous spirit acquires the merit of romance.
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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.
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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.
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Yet, when one thinks of it, diplomacy without force is a but a rotten reed to lean upon.
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The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.
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Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin.
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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.
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Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear.
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In plucking the fruit of memory one runs the risk of spoiling its bloom, especially if it has got to be carried into the market.
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Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you, smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, Come and find out.
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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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To be a great autocrat you must be a great barbarian.
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The last thing a woman will consent to in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.
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To be busy with material affairs is the best preservative against reflection, fears, doubts ... all these things which stand in the way of achievement. I suppose a fellow proposing to cut his throat would experience a sort of relief while occupied in stropping his razor carefully.
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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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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.
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