Who knows what true loneliness is – not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. – Joseph Conrad
I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace. – Joseph Conrad
I had ambition not only to go farther than any man had ever been before, but as far as it was possible for a man to go. – Joseph Conrad
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
Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin. – Joseph Conrad
Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions. – Joseph Conrad
Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line. – Joseph Conrad
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. – Joseph Conrad
In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility. – Joseph Conrad
I don’t like work… but I like what is in work – the chance to find yourself. Your own reality – for yourself, not for others – which no other man can ever know. – Joseph Conrad
It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth. – Joseph Conrad
The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage. – Joseph Conrad
As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and the consistent narrowness of his outlook. – Joseph Conrad
The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness. – Joseph Conrad
The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement – but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims. – Joseph Conrad
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
To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence. – Joseph Conrad
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
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
The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. – Joseph Conrad
It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog. – Joseph Conrad
