Joseph Conrad

English novelist (born in Poland) noted for sea stories and for his narrative technique (1857-1924)

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As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and the consistent narrowness of his outlook.
Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of illusions.
All a man can betray is his conscience.
All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
Being a woman is a terribly difficult task since it consists principally in dealing with men.
Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it.
For the great mass of mankind, the only saving grace needed is a steady fidelity to what is nearest to hand and heart for the short moment of each human effort.
Having had to encounter single-handed during his period of eclipse many physical dangers, he was well aware of the most dangerous element common to them all: of the crushing, paralysing sense of human littleness, which is what really defeats a human struggling with natural forces, alone, far from the eyes of his fellows.
How does one kill fear, I wonder How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by the spectral throat
I don't like work... but I like what is in work -- the chance to find yourself. Your own reality -- for yourself, not for others -- which no other man can ever know.
I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.
Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.
It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth.
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history.
The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.
The mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.
The way of even the most jusitifiable revolution is prepared by personal impulses disguised into creeds.
They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything.
We live, as we dream, alone
What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it.
Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put its trust in life.
Words, as is well known, are great foes of reality.
You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.

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