"A task, any task, undertaken in an adventurous spirit acquires the merit of romance."
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Quote collection
Joseph Conrad quotes (page 11 of 14)
278 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"You can't breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, and at the same time keep your precarious grip on existence."
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"Who would care to question the ground of forgiveness or compassion."
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"I -- I alone know how to mourn for him as he deserves.' But while we were still shaking hands, such a look of awful desolation came upon her face that I perceived she was one of those creatures that are not the playthings of Time. For her he had died only yesterday. And, by Jove! the impression was so powerful that for me, too, he seemed to have died only yesterday -- nay, this very minute. I saw her and him in the same instant of time -- his death and her sorrow -- I saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death. Do you understand? I saw them together -- I heard them together."
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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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"I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced"
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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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"A train of thought is never false. The falsehood lies deep in the necessities of existence."
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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."
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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. It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp."
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"Don't you forget what's divine in the Russian soul and that's resignation."
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"Egoism , which is the moving force of the world, and altruism , which is its morality , these two contradictory instincts , of which one is so plain and the other so mysterious, cannot serve us unless in the incomprehensible alliance of their irreconcilable antagonism."
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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."
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"I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts."
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"There is a kind way of assisting our fellow-creatures which is enough to break their hearts while it saves their outer envelope."
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"That faculty of beholding at a hint the face of his desire and the shape of his dream, without which the earth would know no lover and no adventurer."
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"The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth."
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"Things and men have always a certain sense, a certain side by which they must be got hold of if one wants to obtain a solid grasp and a perfect command."
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"The interior deprives men of their senses. Here, the eerie stillness of the wilderness and the darkness of night render the men both deaf and blind. Without eyes or ears, they have no frame of reference-and without a frame of reference, they have no clear identities."
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"The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the privilege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautiful continuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection."
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