Joseph Conrad was, by far, one of the most talented and skilled writers belonging to Polish-British ancestry. A great novelist, not many know the fact that Conrad was not fluent in English until in his twenties. Despite his poor spoken English abilities, he was a master of written art and a prose stylist. Conrad in his lifetime wrote some of the most popular novels in English language, ‘Lord Jim’, ‘Nostromo’, ‘The Secret Agent’, ‘Heart of Darkness’. His works were widely appreciated for their unique flavour and tinge. Conrad brought about non-English sensibilities into English literature. Before turning into a writer, he briefly worked as a mariner in the French and British merchant marines. His experience in sea shaped much of his work, almost all of which have a nautical setting and address profound themes of nature and existence. Conrad was a writer of complex skill and striking insight and had an intensely personal vision which was visible in his novels. As such, he was claimed as one of the greatest English novelists ever. Apart from his novels which re-interpreted his colourful adventures of the sea, Conrad’s quotes also present life’s greatest learning in simple words. Check this segment and find some of the top quotes by Joseph Conrad.
Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.
Joseph Conrad
Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.
Joseph Conrad
He struggled with himself, too. I saw it -- I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.
Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.
We couldn't understand because we were too far... and could not remember because we were traveling in the night of first ages, those ages that had gone, leaving hardly a sign... and no memories.
Joseph Conrad
They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force--nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.
There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.
I let him run on, this papier-maché Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.
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 much.
The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil water-way leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.
Who knows what true happiness is, not the conventional word.. but the naked terror. To the lonely themselves, that wears a mask, the most miserable outcast hugs some memory.. or some illusion.
For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world of straightforward facts; but the feeling would not last long. Something would turn up to scare it away.
He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is detestable. And it has a fascination, too, which goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination--you know.
Joseph Conrad
It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.
I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance.
A writing may be lost; a lie may be written; but what the eye has seen is truth and remains in the mind!
Joseph Conrad
Everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places.
...for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence...
Joseph Conrad
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.
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.
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.
It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing, that feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy beetle crawled on - which was just what you wanted it to do.
The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the
privilege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautiful
continuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection.
Youth is insolent; it is its right – its necessity; it has got to assert itself, and all assertion in this world of doubts is a defiance, is an insolence…
Joseph Conrad
The man who says that he has no illusions has at least that one.
Joseph Conrad
He existed for me, and after all it is only through me that he exists for you.
There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind.
Joseph Conrad
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.
Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham.
Some great men owe most of their greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for their tools the exact quality of strength that matters for their work.
Joseph Conrad
The sky over Patusan was blood-red, immense, streaming like an open vein. An enormous sun nestled crimson amongst the treetops, and the forest below had a black and forbidding face.
The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse.
I thought his memory was like the other memories of the dead that accumulate in every man's life,—a vague impress on the brain of shadows that had fallen on it in their swift and final passage. . .
He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a featherhat, walking on his hind legs.
You take a different view of your actions when you come to understand, when you are made to understand every day that your existence is necessary - you see, absolutely necessary - to another person.
(law is) the pretty branding instrument invented by the overfed to protect themselves against the hungry ?
Joseph Conrad
Mistah Kurtz--he dead.
Joseph Conrad
An appeal to me in this fiendish row - is there? Very well; I hear; I admit, but I have a voice too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced.
 the pretty branding instrument invented by the overfed to protect themselves against the hungry ? )
