"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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Quote collection
Joseph Conrad quotes (page 13 of 14)
278 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind. All intellectual and artistic ambitions are permissible, up to and even beyond the limit of prudent sanity. They can hurt no one."
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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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"Analytical philosophy was very interesting. It always struck me as being very interesting and full of tremendous intellectual curiosities. It is wonderful to see the mind at work in such an intense manner, but, for me, it was still too far removed from my own issues."
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"The ocean has the conscienceless temper of a savage autocrat spoiled by much adulation"
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"The condemned social order has not been built up on paper and ink, and I don't fancy that a combination of paper and ink will ever put an end to it."
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"I have been called romantic. Well, that can't be helped. But stay. I seem to remember that I have been called a realist also. And as that charge too can be made out, let us try to live up to it, at whatever cost, for a change."
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"He hated all this, and somehow he couldn't get away."
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"Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing."
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"Sometimes it takes all my resolution and power of self-control to refrain from butting my head against the wall. I want to howl and foam at the mouth but I daren't."
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"I remember my youth... the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men."
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"Some of us, regarding the ocean with understanding and affection, have seen it looking old, as if the immemorial ages had been stirred up from the undisturbed bottom of ooze. For it is a gale of wind that makes the sea look old."
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"All one's work might have been better done; but this is a sort of reflection a worker must put aside courageously if he doesn't mean every one of his conceptions to remain forever a private vision, an evanescent reverie."
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"Everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places."
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"It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core."
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"There is a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride, beyond mere skill, almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art - which is art."
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"The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket. Revolution, legality--counter-moves in the same game; forms of idleness at bottom identical."
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"The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion."
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"We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs forever, but in the august light of abiding memories."
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"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."
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