Joseph Conrad Quotes

“The boat fairly flew; we sweltered side by side in the stagnant superheated air; the smell of mud, of mush, the primeval smell of fecund earth, seemed to sting our faces; till suddenly at a bend it was as if a great hand far away had lifted a heavy curtain, had flung open un immense portal. The light itself seemed to stir, the sky above our heads widened, a far-off murmur reached our ears, a freshness enveloped us, filled our lungs, quickened our thoughts, our blood, our regrets — and, straight ahead, the forests sank down against the dark-blue ridge of the sea.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“He was tall and lantern-jawed, and clean-shaven, and looked like a barrister who had thrown his wig to the dogs.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“How good was life for those that were on the winning side!”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“Yes. I had my hands full of complications which were most valuable as “experience.” People have a great opinion of the advantages of experience. But in this connection experience means always something disagreeable as opposed to the charm and innocence of illusions.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“was already the man in command. My sensations could not be like those of any other man on board. In that community I stood, like a king in his country, in a class all by myself. I mean an hereditary king, not a mere elected head of a state. I was brought there to rule by an agency as remote from the people and as inscrutable almost to them as the Grace of God.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“The past eighteen months, so full of new and varied experience, appeared a dreary, prosaic waste of days.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“This is the period of life in which such moments of which I have spoken are likely to come. What moments? Why, the moments of boredom, of weariness, of dissatisfaction. Rash moments. I mean moments when the still young are inclined to commit rash actions, such as getting married suddenly or else throwing up a job for no reason.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“You are not the one to sit still; neither am I. I live for myself, and you shall live for yourself, too — not for a Swedish baron. They make a convenience of people like you and me. A gentleman is better than an employer, but an equal partnership against all the ‘yporcrits is the thing for you and me. We’ll go on wandering the world over, you and I both free and both true. You are no cage bird. We’ll rove together, for we are of them that have no homes. We are born rovers!”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“He sat up suddenly, and uncovered all his teeth in a grin of extraordinary ferocity, which was belied by the persistent amiability of his tone.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“How enraged and humiliated he will be! I promise myself some exquisite moments while watching his play.” “Ay, and suppose he suddenly starts prancing. He may not appreciate the fun.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“Why not pray a little, too?” “Ha, ha, ha! That’s a good one,” burst out the secretary, fixing Mr. Jones with mirthless eyes.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“Duplicity — the refuge of the weak and the cowardly, but of the disarmed, too! Nothing stood between the enchanted dream of her existence and a cruel catastrophe but her duplicity. It seemed to her that the man sitting there before her was an unavoidable presence, which had attended all her life. He was the embodied evil of the world. She was not ashamed of her duplicity.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“Ricardo now looked at her calm face with something like respect. He was even a little awed by her stillness, by her economy of words. Womanlike, she felt the effect she had produced, the effect of knowing much and of keeping all her knowledge in reserve.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“I have touched nothing in the house but what you have given me.” “Lena!” he cried. He was painfully affected by this disclaimer of a charge which he had not made. It was what a servant might have said — an inferior open to suspicion — or, at any rate, a stranger. He was angry at being so wretchedly misunderstood; disenchanted at her not being instinctively aware of the place he had secretly given her in his thoughts.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“It was not that he shrank from alarming her. Not feeling anything definite himself he could not imagine a precise effect being produced on her by any amount of explanation. There is a quality in events which is apprehended differently by different minds or even by the same mind at different times. Any man living at all consciously knows that embarrassing truth.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“Men of tormented conscience, or of a criminal imagination, are aware of much that minds of a peaceful, resigned cast do not even suspect. It is not poets alone who dare descend into the abyss of infernal regions, or even who dream of such a descent. The most inexpressive of human beings must have said to himself, at one time or another: “Anything but this!”...”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“great silence brooded over Samburan — the silence of the great heat that seems pregnant with fatal issues, like the silence of ardent thought. Heyst”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“His father was in an unexpectedly soft mood on that night, when the moon swam in a cloudless sky over the begrimed shadows of the town. “You still believe in something, then?” he said in a clear voice, which had been growing feeble of late. “You believe in flesh and blood, perhaps? A full and equable contempt would soon do away with that, too. But since you have not attained to it, I advise you to cultivate that form of contempt which is called pity. It is perhaps the least difficult — always remembering that you, too, if you are anything, are as pitiful as the rest, yet never expecting any pity for yourself.” “What is one to do, then?” sighed the young man, regarding his father, rigid in the high-backed chair. “Look on — make no sound,” were the last words of the man who had spent his life in blowing blasts upon a terrible trumpet which filled heaven and earth with ruins, while mankind went on its way unheeding.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“quiet, tired way of speaking — you can tell a gentleman by that as much as by anything else almost”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“Schomberg experienced mingled relief and apprehension, as if suddenly an enormous savage cat had begun to wind itself about his legs in inexplicable friendliness.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“That night he had been vapouring before her as to his intention to face his two guests and, instead of that inspiration he needed, had merely received the usual warning: “Be careful, Wilhelm.” He did not want to be told to be careful by an imbecile female. What he needed was a pair of woman’s arms which, flung round his neck, would brace him up for the encounter.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“They had no notice to spare for the hairy Pedro, carrying a tray with the clumsiness of a creature caught in the woods and taught to walk on its hind legs.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“The way Mr. Jones turned his hollow eyes on one, like an incurious spectre, and the way the other, when addressed, suddenly retracted his lips and exhibited his teeth without looking round — here was evidence enough to settle that point. Desperadoes!”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“She knew him well; but she did not know him altogether. The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“It seemed to him that he could never be himself again till he had got even with that artful Swede. He was ready to swear that Heyst had ruined his life. The girl so unfairly, craftily, basely decoyed away would have inspired him to success in a new start. Obviously Mrs. Schomberg, whom he terrified by savagely silent moods combined with underhand, poisoned glances, could give him no inspiration. He had grown generally neglectful, but with a partiality for reckless expedients, as if he did not care when and how his career as a hotel-keeper was to be brought to an end.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“Heyst was not conscious of either friends or of enemies. It was the very essence of his life to be a solitary achievement, accomplished not by hermit-like withdrawal with its silence and immobility, but by a system of restless wandering, by the detachment of an impermanent dweller amongst changing scenes. In this scheme he had perceived the means of passing through life without suffering and almost without a single care in the world — invulnerable because elusive.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“Calm yourself, calm yourself,” he murmured in her ear, returning her clasp at first mechanically, and afterwards with a growing appreciation of her distressed humanity. The heaving of her breast and the trembling of all her limbs, in the closeness of his embrace, seemed to enter his body, to infect his very heart. While she was growing quieter in his arms, he was becoming more agitated, as if there were only a fixed quantity of violent emotion on this earth. The very night seemed more dumb, more still, and the immobility of the vague, black shapes, surrounding him more perfect. “It will be all right,” he tried to reassure her, with a tone of conviction, speaking into her ear, and of necessity clasping her more closely than before.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“Heyst laid down his half-smoked cigar and compressed his lips. Then he got up. It was the same sort of impulse which years ago had made him cross the sandy street of the abominable town of Delli in the island of Timor and accost Morrison, practically a stranger to him then, a man in trouble, expressively harassed, dejected, lonely. It was the same impulse. But he did not recognize it. He was not thinking of Morrison then. It may be said that, for the first time since the final abandonment of the Samburan coal mine, he had completely forgotten the late Morrison. It is true that to a certain extent he had forgotten also where he was. Thus, unchecked by any sort of self consciousness, Heyst walked up the central passage.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“Nobody amongst us had any interest in men who went home. They were all right; they did not count any more. Going to Europe was nearly as final as going to Heaven. It removed a man from the world of hazard and adventure.”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels

“Listen. This morning on board, in my cabin I went down on my knees and prayed for help. I went down on my knees!” “You are a believer, Morrison?” asked Heyst with a distinct note of respect. “Surely I am not an infidel.” Morrison was swiftly reproachful in his answer, and there came a pause, Morrison perhaps interrogating his conscience, and Heyst preserving a mien of unperturbed, polite interest. “I prayed like a child, of course. I believe in children praying — well, women, too, but I rather think God expects men to be more self-reliant. I don’t hold with a man everlastingly bothering the Almighty with his silly troubles. It seems such cheek. Anyhow, this morning I — I have never done any harm to any God’s creature knowingly — I prayed. A sudden impulse — I went flop on my knees; so you may judge —”
― Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels