Joseph Conrad - Lord Jim (1900)

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There is a weird power in a spoken word.... And a word carries far—very far — deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space.

Joseph Conrad
How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?

Joseph Conrad
For a moment I had a view of a world that seemed to wear a vast and dismal aspect of disorder, while, in truth, thanks to our unwearied efforts, it is as sunny an arrangement of small conveniences as the mind of man can conceive.

Joseph Conrad
The language of facts, that are so often more enigmatic than the craftiest arrangement of words.

Joseph Conrad
Nature — the balance of colossal forces.... Nature — the great artist.

Joseph Conrad
The blight of futility that lies in wait for men's speeches had fallen upon our conversation and made it a thing of empty sounds.

Joseph Conrad
. Chance, whose ally is Time that cannot be hurried, and whose enemy is Death, that will not wait.

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
They demand facts from him, as if facts could explain anything.

Joseph Conrad
Nature - the balance of colossal forces.... Nature - the great artist.

Joseph Conrad
It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self knowledge.

Joseph Conrad
Some great men owe most of their greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for their tools the exact quality of strength that matters for their work.

Joseph Conrad
I am a great foe to favoritism in public life, in private life, and even in the delicate relationship of an author to his works.

Joseph Conrad
Youth is insolent; it is its right – its necessity; it has got to assert itself, and all assertion in this world of doubts is a defiance, is an insolence…

Joseph Conrad
He passes away under a cloud, inscrutable at heart, forgotten, unforgiven, and excessively romantic. Not in the wildest days of his boyish visions could he have seen the alluring shape of such an extraordinary success!

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
Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life.

Joseph Conrad
There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all of the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.

Joseph Conrad
That faculty of beholding at a hint the face of his desire and the shape of his dream, without which the earth would know no lover and no adventurer.

Joseph Conrad
You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.

Joseph Conrad