Vivien > Vivien's Quotes

“My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.”
― Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

“Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing.”
― Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer and other stories

“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. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”
― Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

“Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream-alone...”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“He struggled with himself, too. I saw it -- I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.”
― Joseph Conrad

“It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.”
― Joseph Conrad, An Outcast of the Islands

“I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life...”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“From a letter to Barrett H.Clark, 4 May 1918(LL,II,pp.204-5):
"my attitude to subjects and expressions, the angles of vision, my methods of composition will, within limits, be always changing--not because I am unstable or unpricipled but because I am free. Or perhaps it may be more exact to say, because I am always trying for freedom--within my limits...A work of art is seldom limited to one exclusive meaning and not necessarily tending to a definite conclusion. And this for the reason that the nearer it approaches art, the more it acquires a symbolic character.”
― Joseph Conrad

“--From "A Familiar Preface", 1912(PR,pp,19-20）：
“At a time when nothing which is not revolutionary in some way or other can expect to attract much attention I have not been revolutionary in my writings. The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas. Its hard, absolute optimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and intolerance it contains. No doubt one should smile at these things;but, imperfect Esthete, I am no better Philosopher.”
― Joseph Conrad

“...if it be true that every novel contains an element of autobiography—and this can hardly be denied, since the creator can only express himself in his creation—then there are some of us to whom an open display of sentiment is repugnant.”
― Joseph Conrad

“Liberty of imagination should be the most precious possession of a novelist. To try voluntarily to discover the fettering dogmas of its own inspiration, is a trick worthy of humna perverseness which, after inventing an absurdity, endeavours to find for it a pedigree of distinguished ancestors...”
― Joseph Conrad

“Fiction, at the point of development at which it has arrived, demands from the writer a spirit of scrupulous abnegation.The only legitimate of all the irreconcilable antagonisms that make our life so enigmatic, so burdensome, so fascinating, so dangerous--so full of hope. They exist! And this is the only fundamental truth of fiction.”
― Joseph Conrad

“---In his major phase, he[Conrad] was "ahead of his times" in ideas and techniques;and this was because he was more intelligently and perceptively of his times than most writers then were. In his vigilant response to 19th century preoccupations, he anticipated--often critically--many 20th century preoccupations. He was a versatile intermediary between the Romantic and Victorian traditions and the innovations of Modernism.”
― Cedric Watts A Preface to Conrad p184

“--In his themes and techniques, Conrad was a liberator:he eloquently questioned what other people took for granted.”
― Cedric Watts "A Preface to Conrad" p190

“Albert J. Guerard has justly
called the story "one of the great dark meditationsin literature, and one of the purest expressions of a melancholy temperament.”
― Hunt Hawkins

“On 7 October 1909 E. D.Morel, head of the Congo Reform Association,wrote A. Conan Doyle, a member, that Conrad's story [Heart of Darkness] was the "most powerful thing ever writtenon the subject.”
― Hunt Hawkins