Lord Jim

by Joseph Conrad

The human heart is vast enough to contain all the world. It is valiant enough to bear the burden, but where is the courage that would cast it off?

Wow.

But the figure round which all these are grouped—that one lives, and I am not certain of him. No magician's wand can immobilise him under my eyes. He is one of us.

‘In the destructive element immerse!… To follow the dream, and again to follow the dream—and so—always—usque ad finem…’

he himself appeared no bigger than a child—then only a speck, a tiny white speck, that seemed to catch all the light left in a darkened world…. And, suddenly, I lost him…”

‘We want a belief in its necessity and its justice, to make a worthy and conscious sacrifice of our lives. Without it the sacrifice is only forgetfulness, the way of offering is no better than the way to perdition.’ In other words, you maintained that we must fight in the ranks or our lives don't count. Possibly!

And yet is not mankind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive devotion? And what is the pursuit of truth—after all?