718 Quotes by Joseph Conrad

I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go.

They were dying slowly – it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now – nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest.

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.

The sight of it made the earth seem unearthly. They were accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there – there you could look at a thing monstrous, beautiful, and free.

Follow your bliss. Find where it is and don’t be afraid to follow it.

I like what is in the work – the chance to find yourself.

Nobody looked at him. He passed on unsuspected and deadly, like a pest in the street full of men.

True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible.

I was anxious to deal with this shadow by myself alone – and to this day I don’t know why I was so jealous of sharing with any one the peculiar blackness of that experience.