 |
Ambition
|
|
All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
-Joseph Conrad, A Personal Record, 1912
|
|
|
A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.
-Joseph Conrad
|
|
Art
|
|
|
An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.
-Joseph Conrad
|
|
|
Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.
-Joseph Conrad
|
|
Authors & Writing
|
|
|
I dare say I am compelled, unconsciously compelled, now to write volume after volume, as in past years I was compelled to go to sea, voyage after voyage. Leaves must follow upon each other as leagues used to follow in the days gone by, on and on to the appointed end, which, being truth itself, is one -- one for all men and for all occupations.
-Joseph Conrad
|
|
|
What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men's existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history?
-Joseph Conrad
|
|
Bravery
|
|
|
Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it.
-Joseph Conrad
|
|
Criticism
|
|
|
Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.
-Joseph Conrad
|
|
Death
|
|
|
I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair's-breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say.
-Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
|
|
Despair
|
|
|
Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham.
-Joseph Conrad
|
|
Dreams
|
|
|
A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavor to do, he drowns.
-Joseph Conrad
|
|
Emotions
|
|
|
It is very difficult to be wholly joyous or wholly sad on this earth. The comic, when it is human, soon takes upon itself a face of pain; and some of our grieves... have their source in weaknesses which must be recognized with smiling compassion as the common inheritance of us all.
-Joseph Conrad
|
|
Empire
|
|
|
The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it.
-Joseph Conrad
|
|
Enemy, Enemies
|
|
|
You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
-Joseph Conrad
|
|
Evil
|
|
|
A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
-Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes, 1911
|
|
Exaggeration
|
|
|
Danger lies in the writer becoming the victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity, and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too blunt for his purpose -- as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent emotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to sniveling and giggles.
-Joseph Conrad
|
|
Fate & Destiny
|
|
|
It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth.
-Joseph Conrad, Chance
|
|
Fear
|
|
|
How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a specter through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?
-Joseph Conrad
|
|
Gossip
|
|
|
Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.
-Joseph Conrad
|
|
Government
|
|
|
Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin.
-Joseph Conrad
|
|
Home
|
|
|
Going home must be like going to render an account.
-Joseph Conrad
|
|
Honor
|
|
|
As to honor -- you know -- it's a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn't theirs.
-Joseph Conrad
|
|
Humor
|
|
|
A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.
-Joseph Conrad
|
|
Ideas
|
|
|
Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy!
-Joseph Conrad, Marlow, in Lord Jim, ch. 5, 1900
|
|
Illusion
|
|
|
It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull.
-Joseph Conrad
|
Books by and about Joseph Conrad