It is the mark of an inexperienced man not to believe in luck.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Luck
It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Illusion
God is for men and religion for women.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Religion
All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Ambition
Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Art, Artists, Arts
How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a specter through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Fear, Anxiety
A man is a worker. If he is not that he is nothing.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Work
Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love—and to put its trust in life.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Love, Trust
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Evil
A man’s real life is that accorded to him in the thoughts of other men by reason of respect or natural love.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: People
A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavor to do, he drowns.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Dreams
It is very difficult to be wholly joyous or wholly sad on this earth. The comic, when it is human, soon takes upon itself a face of pain; and some of our grieves… have their source in weaknesses which must be recognized with smiling compassion as the common inheritance of us all.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Emotions
History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Talent
To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Language
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. All claim to special righteousness awakens in me that scorn and anger from which a philosophical mind should be free.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Revolution, Revolutionaries, Revolutions
The mind of man is capable of anything – because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Future
A man’s most open actions have a secret side to them.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Secrets
As in political, so in literary action, a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Writing
Criticism: that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Critics, Criticism, Garden
The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.
—Joseph Conrad
Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Courage, Bravery
They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience…
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Loyalty, Betrayal, One liners
Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: World
To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Planning, Aspirations, Existence
No man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Self-Knowledge, Awareness
I dare say I am compelled, unconsciously compelled, now to write volume after volume, as in past years I was compelled to go to sea, voyage after voyage. Leaves must follow upon each other as leagues used to follow in the days gone by, on and on to the appointed end, which, being truth itself, is one—one for all men and for all occupations.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Authors & Writing
As to honor, you know, it’s a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn’t theirs.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Honor
The Westerly Wind asserting his sway from the south-west quarter is often like a monarch gone mad, driving forth with wild imprecations the most faithful of his courtiers to shipwreck, disaster, and death.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Weather
Happiness, happiness… the flavor is with you—with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you please.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Happiness
A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.
—Joseph Conrad
Topics: Humor, Jokes, The Body
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Raymond Chandler American Novelist
- George Orwell English Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
- Salman Rushdie Indian-born British Novelist
- Mary Elizabeth Braddon English Novelist
- Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) British Short Story Writer
- Ford Madox Ford English Novelist, Poet, Critic
- Benjamin Disraeli British Head of State
- Frances Hodgson Burnett British Novelist, Playwright
- Douglas Adams British Author
- Anthony Burgess English Novelist, Critic
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