Joseph Conrad
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.Collection: Wall
We are snared into doing things for which we get called names, and things for which we get hanged, and yet the spirit may well survive - survive the condemnations, survive the halter, by Jove! And there are things - they look small enough sometimes too - by which some of us are totally and completely undone.Collection: Names
And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible.Collection: Differences
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.Collection: Stupid
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.Collection: Love
There is a kind way of assisting our fellow-creatures which is enough to break their hearts while it saves their outer envelope.Collection: Heart
We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darknessCollection: Heart
A train of thought is never false. The falsehood lies deep in the necessities of existence.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Running
No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone.Collection: Life
The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil water-way leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.Collection: Heart
Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy!Collection: Simple
The earth for us is a place to live in, where we must put up with sights, with sounds, with smells, too, by Jove! - breathe dead hippo, so as to speak, and not be contaminated. And there, don't you see? your strength comes in, the faith in your ability for the digging of unostentatious holes to bury the stuff in - your power of devotion, not to yourself, but to an obscure, back-breaking business.Collection: Smell
I can't imagine a human being so hard up for something to do as to quarrel with me.Collection: Imagination
I was constantly watching myself, my secret self, as dependent on my actions as my own personalityCollection: Self
One must explore deep and believe the incredible to find the new particles of truth floating in an ocean of insignificance.Collection: Believe
The mind of man is capable of anything.Collection: Heart
The human heart is vast enough to contain all the world.Collection: Heart
Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.Collection: Art
Never test another man by your own weakness.Collection: Men
Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.Collection: Moving
Protection is the first necessity of opulence and luxury.Collection: Luxury
Happiness, happiness ... the flavor is with you-with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you please.Collection: Happiness
It’s extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it’s just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome.Collection: Life
We can never cease to be ourselves.Collection: Cease
Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes.Collection: Madness
Joy and sorrow in this world pass into each other, mingling their forms and their murmurs in the twilight of life as mysterious as an overshadowed ocean, while the dazzling brightness of supreme hopes lies far off, fascinating and still, on the distant edge of the horizonCollection: Lying
It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self knowledge.Collection: Men
We live as we dream - alone.Collection: Love
A fool has more ideas than a wise man can foresee.Collection: Wise
Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.Collection: Memories
Violence is not a catalyst but a diversion.Collection: Violence
You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget.Collection: Hate
[The artist] speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation--and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear which binds together all humanity--the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.Collection: Dream
The real significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind.Collection: Real
All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising.Collection: Art
One ship is very much like another and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny.Collection: Ignorance
Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.Collection: Memories
As a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement.Collection: Achievement
Your strength is just an accident owed to the weakness of others.Collection: Strength
A certain simplicity of thought is common to serene souls at both ends of the social scale.Collection: Simplicity
I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine.Collection: Imagine
Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart - its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life.Collection: Home
What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it.Collection: Victim
The ethical view of the universe involves us in so many cruel and absurd contradictions that I have come to suspect that the aim of creation cannot be ethical at all.Collection: Views
There is never enough time to say our last word-the last word of our love, of our desire, faith, remorse, submission, revolt.Collection: Desire
I slipped the book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship.Collection: Book
God is for men, and religion for women.Collection: Women