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.
JOSEPH CONRADYou 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.
More Joseph Conrad Quotes
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The sea – this truth must be confessed – has no generosity. No display of manly qualities – courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness – has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.
JOSEPH CONRAD -
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.
JOSEPH CONRAD -
It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth.
JOSEPH CONRAD -
Perhaps life is just that- a dream and a fear.
JOSEPH CONRAD -
Who knows what true loneliness is – not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.
JOSEPH CONRAD -
Nowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks, and months fall away quicker into the past. They seem to be left astern as easily as the light air-bubbles in the swirls of the ship’s wake.
JOSEPH CONRAD -
To be a great autocrat you must be a great barbarian.
JOSEPH CONRAD -
To be busy with material affairs is the best preservative against reflection, fears, doubts, all these things which stand in the way of achievement. I suppose a fellow proposing to cut his throat would experience a sort of relief while occupied in stropping his razor carefully.
JOSEPH CONRAD -
We can never cease to be ourselves.
JOSEPH CONRAD -
We live as we dream – alone.
JOSEPH CONRAD -
There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.
JOSEPH CONRAD -
God is for men, and religion for women.
JOSEPH CONRAD -
We live as we dream – alone. While the dream disappears, the life continues painfully.
JOSEPH CONRAD -
The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.
JOSEPH CONRAD -
In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility.
JOSEPH CONRAD