718 Quotes by Joseph Conrad

Danger lies in the writer becoming the victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity, and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too blunt for his purpose—as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent emotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to sniveling and giggles.

This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still...

This return to an eternal rest is the inevitable aftermath of the moment of vision. It is a double return, the return of the darkness to its uninterrupted repose in the flux at the heart of things, and the return of man, after his evanescent glimpse of truth, to the forgetful sleep of everyday life.

A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

Gangsters are not nearly so frightening as you'd think. Some of them are quite ordinary looking.

If gangsters look like gangsters, the police would soon get after them.

Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race comes to an end.