Joseph Conrad - Sea Quotes

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For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed to feel for it, for all the celebrations it had been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.

Joseph Conrad
For there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence...

Joseph Conrad
And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose.

Joseph Conrad
Everything can be found at sea according to the spirit of your quest.

Joseph Conrad
Some of us, regarding the ocean with understanding and affection, have seen it looking old, as if the immemorial ages had been stirred up from the undisturbed bottom of ooze. For it is a gale of wind that makes the sea look old.

Joseph Conrad
The sea never changes and its works, for all the talk of men, are wrapped in mystery.

Joseph Conrad
A modern fleet of ships does not so much make use of the sea as exploit a highway.

Joseph Conrad
A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea.... The way is to the destructive element submit yourself, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up.

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 swirl's of the ship's wake.

Joseph Conrad
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.

Joseph Conrad
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
I had been six years at sea, but had only seen Melbourne and Sydney, very good places, charming places in their way — but Bankok!

Joseph Conrad
Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please.

Joseph Conrad
This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak.

Joseph Conrad
I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more — the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort — to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires — and expires, too soon — too soon before life itself.

Joseph Conrad
There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.

Joseph Conrad
Running all over the sea trying to get behind the weather.

Joseph Conrad