The Secret Agent Quotes

“We can never cease to be ourselves.”
― Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

“Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes.”
― Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

“I am afraid that if you want to go down into history you'll have to do something for it.”
― Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

“Curiosity being one of the forms of self-revelation, a systematically incurious person remains always partly mysterious. ”
― Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale

“Ossip, I think you are a humbug...you are not even a doctor. But you are funny. Your notion of a humanity universally putting out the tongue and taking the pill from pole to pole at the bidding of a few solemn jokers is worthy of the prophet....”
― Joseph Conrad, Secret Agent

“The terrosirt and the policeman both come form the same basket. Revolution, legality - countermoves in the same game; forms of idleness at bottom identical.”
― Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

“The encounter did not leave behind with Chief Inspector Heat that satisfactory sense of superiority the members of the police force get from the unofficial but intimate side of their intercourse with the criminal classes, by which the vanity of power is soothed, and the vulgar love of domination over our fellow creatures is flattered as worthily as it deserves.”
― Joseph Conrad, Secret Agent

“[Perverse] unreason has its own logical processes”
― Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent