718 Quotes by Joseph Conrad

I wondered how far I should turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one’s own personality every man sets up for himself secretly.

And there’s another thing: a man should stand up to his bad luck, to his mistakes, to his conscience and all that sort of thing. Why – what else would you have to fight against.

Soul! If anybody had ever struggled with a soul, I am the man. And I wasn’t arguing with a lunatic either. Believe me or not, his intelligence was perfectly clear – concentrated, it is true, upon himself with horrible intensity, yet clear; and therein was my only chance – barring, of course, the killing him there and then, which wasn’t so good, on account of unavoidable noise. But his soul was mad.

Nothing is more painful than the shock of sharp contradictions that lacerate our intelligence and our feelings.

It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream – making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams.

This is glorious!′ I cried, and then i looked at the sinner by my side. He sat with his head sunk on his breast and said ‘Yes’, without raising his eyes, as if afraid to see writ large on the clear sky of the offing the reproach of his romantic conscience.

The value of a sentence is the personality that utters’t, for nothing new can be said by any man or woman.

One can’t live with one’s finger everlastingly on one’s pulse.

I was glad of it,” he repeated, emphatically. “You may be surprised at it, but then you haven’t gone through the experience I’ve had of her. I can tell you, it was something to remember. Of course, I got off scot free myself – as you can see. She did her best to break up my pluck for me tho’. She jolly near drove as fine a fellow as ever lived into a madhouse. What do you say to that – eh?