Pops > Pops's Quotes

“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 much.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer

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

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
― Albert Camus

“Death's got an Invisibility Cloak?" Harry interrupted again.
"So he can sneak up on people," said Ron. "Sometimes he gets bored of running at them, flapping his arms and shrieking...”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“We came to see Jace. Is he alright?"
"I don't know," Magnus said. "Does he normally just lie on the floor like that without moving?”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Ashes

“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

“She was a girl who knew how to be happy even when she was sad. And that’s important—you know ”
― Marilyn Monroe

“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

“I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
― Albert Einstein

“Do you hate people?”

“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.”
― Charles Bukowski, Barfly

“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

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain -- why he did not instantly disappear.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Beneath the makeup and behind the smile I am just a girl who wishes for the world.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.”
― Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

“It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.”
― Joseph Conrad

“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:
The horror! The horror!”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.”
― Joseph Conrad, Chance

“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?”
― Ernest Hemingway

“If you're looking for sympathy you'll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.”
― David Sedaris, Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays

“Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off forever from everything you had known once -somewhere- far away in another existence perhaps. There were moments when one's past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Never laugh at live dragons.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Conrad placed on the title page an epigraph taken from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene:

"Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas,
Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please"

This also became Conrad's epitaph.”
― Joseph Conrad, The Rover

“I don't know the question, but sex is definitely the answer.”
― Woody Allen