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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.

Joseph Conrad

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.
JOSEPH CONRAD

Death Forget Hate Mortal Myself Simplicity World
A writing may be lost; a lie may be written; but what the eye has seen is truth and remains in the mind!
JOSEPH CONRAD

Eyes Lost Lying See Truth Wind Writing
You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
JOSEPH CONRAD

Enemy Friendship Judgement Man
To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.
JOSEPH CONRAD

Aspiration Clear Existence Human Path Temper
It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull.
JOSEPH CONRAD

Illusion Profit Respect Safety
A task, any task, undertaken in an adventurous spirit acquires the merit of romance.
JOSEPH CONRAD

Adventure Romance Spirit Task
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

Achievement Affair Busy Doubt Experience Fear Material Reflection
God is for men, and religion for women.
JOSEPH CONRAD

God Man One Liner Religion Woman
I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine.
JOSEPH CONRAD

Death Excitement Imagination Yourself
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.
JOSEPH CONRAD

Chance Discover Reality Work Yourself
We live in the flicker — may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday.
JOSEPH CONRAD

Darkness Earth Live Long Old Past
All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
JOSEPH CONRAD

Ambition Exception Kind Law Man
Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time.
JOSEPH CONRAD

Carry Fools Man Time Wisdom
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 CONRAD

Art Bird Destroy History Repeat Reproduction Song Wild World
Everything belonged to him–but that was a trifle. The thing to know was what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.
JOSEPH CONRAD

Darkness Himself Power
Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.
JOSEPH CONRAD

Art Aspiration Carry Condition Humble Justice Work

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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