Joseph Conrad - Under Western Eyes (1911)

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Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. I have been for many years a teacher of languages. It is an occupation which at length becomes fatal to whatever share of imagination, observation, and insight an ordinary person may be heir to. To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.

Joseph Conrad
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

Joseph Conrad
Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin.

Joseph Conrad
A man's most open actions have a secret side to them.

Joseph Conrad
I don't like work — no man does — but I like what is in the work — the chance to find yourself. Your own reality — for yourself, not for others — what no other man can ever know.

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. Now and then a fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant only. No human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude without going mad.

Joseph Conrad
The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement — but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims.

Joseph Conrad
I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.

Joseph Conrad
Don't you ever forget what's divine in the Russian soul—and that's resignation.

Joseph Conrad
Let a fool be made serviceable according to his folly.

Joseph Conrad
A man's real life is that accorded to him in the thoughts of other men by reason of respect or natural love.

Joseph Conrad
To a teacher of language there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.

Joseph Conrad
They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience.

Joseph Conrad