Quote

The blight of futility that lies in wait for men's speeches had fallen upon our conversation and made it a thing of empty sounds.

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
Conversation
Futility
Waiting
Speeches
Lying
Fallen
Upon
Sounds
Sound
Wait
Thing
Empty
Made
Speech
Men
Lies
Blight

More quotes by 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
For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed for it, for all the celebrations it has been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.
Joseph Conrad
Image
I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.
Joseph Conrad
Image
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.
Joseph Conrad
Image
There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.
Joseph Conrad
Image
Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off.
Joseph Conrad
Image
Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time.
Joseph Conrad
Image
The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history.
Joseph Conrad
Image
Happiness, happiness ... the flavor is with you-with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you please.
Joseph Conrad
Image
Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes.
Joseph Conrad
Image
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.
Joseph Conrad
Image
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.
Joseph Conrad
Image
In the time of Spanish rule, and for many years afterwards, the town of Sulaco--the luxuriant beauty of the orange gardens bears witness to its antiquity--had never been commercially anything more important than a coasting port with a fairly large local trade in ox-hides and indigo.
Joseph Conrad
Image
In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility.
Joseph Conrad
Image
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
Image
There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies.
Joseph Conrad
Image
She feared the unknown as we all do, and her ignorance made the unknown infinitely vast.
Joseph Conrad
Image
I was constantly watching myself, my secret self, as dependent on my actions as my own personality
Joseph Conrad
Image
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
Image
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.
Joseph Conrad