"He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense."
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Quote collection
Joseph Conrad quotes (page 4 of 14)
278 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"You can't, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty."
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"Your strength is just an accident owed to the weakness of others."
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"They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force--nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others."
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"It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth."
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"Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted."
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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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"Kisses are the remnants of paradise."
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"Reality, as usual, beats fiction out of sight."
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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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"Being myself animated by feelings of affection toward my fellowmen, I am saddened by the modern system of advertising. Whatever evidence it offers of enterprise, ingenuity, impudence, and resource in certain individuals, it proves to my mind the wide prevalence of that form of mental degradation which is called gullibility."
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"They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance."
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"A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer."
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"It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self knowledge."
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"Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live."
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"It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull."
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"The atmosphere of officialdom would kill anything that breathes the air of human endeavour, would extinguish hope and fear alike in the supremacy of paper and ink."
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"To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence."
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"Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets."
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