Status Updates From The Portable Conrad (Pengui...

“I don’t like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don’t like work—no man does— but I like what is in the work— the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show and never can tell what is really means.”

“Because triumphant health in the general rout of constitutions is a kind of power in itself…Such a suspicion made one pause— for out there there were no external checks.”

“A neglected gap was all the gate it had and the first glance at the place was enough to let you see the flabby devil was running that show.”

“I respected his collars, his vast cuffs, his brushed hair….in the great demoralization of the land he kept up his appearance. That’s backbone. His starched collars and got-up shirt-fronts were achievements of character.

“…I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly.”

“They were building a railway. The Cliff was not in the way or anything; but this objectless blasting was all the work going on.”

“Nowhere did we stop long enough to get a particularised impression, but the general sense of vague and oppressive wonder grew upon me. It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares.”

“The idleness of a passenger, my isolation amongst all these men with whom I had no point of contact…seemed to keep me away from the truth of things, within the toil of a mournful and senseless delusion.”

“It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything like it, and never can be…if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.”

“Avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun.”

“There was a vast amount of red— good to see at any time because one knows that some real work is to be done in there.”

“They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force— nothing to boat of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.”

“There’s no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible which is also detestable.”

“In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, who can is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny.”

“I was almost as much of a stranger on board as himself…And at the moment I felt it most acutely. I felt that it would take very little to make me a suspect person in the eyes of the ship’s company.”

“And I knew well enough the pestiferous danger of such a character where there are no means of legal repression.”

“I asked myself whether it was wise ever to interfere with the established routine of duties even from the kindest of motives.”

“Exactitude in small matters is the very soul of discipline.”

“…I was willing to take the adequacy of the others for granted. They had simply to be equal to their tasks; but I wondered how far I should turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one’s own personality every man sets up for himself secretlyLz

“It was not my part to encourage sneering on board my ship.”

“Haven’t we, together and upon the immortal sea wrung out a meaning from our sinful lives?

“And now we saw it was no such thing. It was just common foolishness; a silly and ineffectual meddling with issues of majestic import..”

“He said that Jimmy was the cause of headwinds. Mortally sick men linger til the first sight of land, and then die; and Jimmy knew that the land would draw his life from him. It is so in every ship.

“Falsehood triumphed. It triumphed through doubt, through stupidity, through pity, through sentimentalism. We set ourselves to bolster it up, from compassion, from recklessness, from a sense of fun.”

“He was one of those commanders who speak little, seem to hear nothing, look at no one— and know everything, hear every whisper, see every fleeting shadow of their ship’s life.”

“We remembered honorable episodes: our devotion, our indomitable perseverance— and we’re proud of them as though they had been the outcome of our unaided impulses.”

“he saw an immensity tormented and blind, moaning and furious that claimed all the days on his tenacious life and when life was over would claim the worn-out body its its slave.”

“He looked upon the immortal sea with the awakened and groping perception of its heartless might; he saw it unchanged, black and foaming under the eternal scrutiny of the stars; he heard its impatient voice calling for him out of a pitiless vastness full of unrest, of turmoil, and of terror…