Works of Joseph Conrad Quotes

“Thinking is the great enemy of perfection. The habit of profound reflection, I am compelled to say, is the most pernicious of all the habits formed by the civilized man.”
― Joseph Conrad, Works of Joseph Conrad. (25+ Works) Includes Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer, The Secret Agent, Under Western Eyes, Lord Jim, Nostromo, Under Western ... more

“Once outside in the sunshine my head swam. It was no longer a question of mere delay. I perceived myself involved in hopeless and humiliating absurdities that were leading me to something very like a disaster. "Let us be calm," I muttered to myself, and ran into the shade of a leprous wall. From that short side-street I could see the broad main thoroughfare ruinous and gay, running away, away between stretches of decaying masonry, bamboo”
― Joseph Conrad, Works of Joseph Conrad. (25+ Works) Includes Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer, The Secret Agent, Under Western Eyes, Lord Jim, Nostromo, Under Western ... more

“Some of them must be dead, he believed. The rest would go on fighting. . . .”
― Joseph Conrad, Works of Joseph Conrad

“Blowing off all the time," went on yelling the second. With a sound as of a hundred scoured saucepans, the orifice of a ventilator spat upon his shoulder a sudden gush of salt water, and he volleyed a stream of curses upon all things on earth including his own soul, ripping and raving, and all the time attending to his business. With a sharp clash of metal the ardent pale glare of the fire opened upon his bullet head, showing his spluttering lips, his insolent face, and with another clang closed like the white-hot wink of an iron eye.”
― Joseph Conrad, Works of Joseph Conrad

“A gust of wind struck upon the nape of Jukes' neck and next moment he felt it streaming about his wet ankles. The stokehold ventilators hummed: in front of the six fire-doors two wild figures, stripped to the waist, staggered and stooped, wrestling with two shovels.”
― Joseph Conrad, Works of Joseph Conrad

“bad leak is an inhuman thing. "One would think that the sole purpose of that fiend- ish gale had been to make a lunatic of that poor devil of a mulatto. It eased before morning, and next day the sky cleared, and as the sea went down the leak took up. When it came to bending a fresh set of sails the crew demanded to put back--and really there was nothing else to do. Boats gone, decks swept clean, cabin gutted, men without a stitch but what they stood in, stores spoiled, ship strained. We put her head for home, and--would you believe it? The wind came east right in our teeth. It blew fresh, it blew continuously. We had to beat up every inch of the way, but she did not leak so badly, the water keeping comparatively smooth. Two hours' pumping in every four is no joke--but it kept her afloat as far as Falmouth. "The good people there live on casualties of the sea, and no doubt were glad to see us. A hungry crowd of shipwrights sharpened their chisels at the sight of that carcass of a ship. And, by Jove! they had pretty pick- ings off”
― Joseph Conrad, Works of Joseph Conrad

“Both these white men looked on native life as a mere play of shadows. A play of shadows the dominant race could walk through unaffected and disregarded in the pursuit of its incomprehensible aims and needs.”
― Joseph Conrad, Works of Joseph Conrad

“Nobody had ever suspected her of having a mind. I mean even a little of it, I mean any at all. One was inclined to think of her as an It--an automaton, a very plain dummy, with an arrangement for bowing the head at times and smiling stupidly now and then. Davidson viewed her profile with a flattened nose, a hollow cheek, and one staring, unwinking, goggle eye. He asked himself: Did that speak just now? Will it speak again? It was as exciting, for the mere wonder of it, as trying to converse with a mechanism.”
― Joseph Conrad, Works of Joseph Conrad

“The common misery of destitution would have made a bitter mockery of a marked insistence on social differences. Gaspar”
― Joseph Conrad, Works of Joseph Conrad. (25+ Works) Includes Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer, The Secret Agent, Under Western Eyes, Lord Jim, Nostromo, Under Western ... more