Joseph Conrad Quotes

Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through that 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. ~ Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad "It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream-making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream—sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams." ~ Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad "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." ~ Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe. ~ Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad Lights of ships moved in the fairway—a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars. ~ Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth!... The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires. ~ Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind. ~ Nostromo by Joseph Conrad "God for men—religions for women," he muttered sometimes. ~ Nostromo by Joseph Conrad But the truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy known but to few on this earth, and whom only the simplest of us are fit to withstand. ~ Nostromo by Joseph Conrad Protection is the first necessity of opulence and luxury. ~ The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad