100 Top Quotes By Joseph Conrad, The Author Of Heart Of Darkness

Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.

  

It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.

  

It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.

  

We live as we dream--alone....

  

My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.

Trying

  

Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing.

Think

  

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

  

Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.

  

Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.

  

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.

  

But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad.

  

The mind of man is capable of anything.

  

We live in the flicker -- may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday.

  

The horror! The horror!

  

The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.

  

We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness

  

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.

Character , Life

  

Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy

  

Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear

Life

  

We live as we dream - alone. While the dream disappears, the life continues painfully.

Life

  

I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life...

  

Like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker.

Like

  

It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.

  

The mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future

Past

  

Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.

Like

  

He hated all this, and somehow he couldn't get away.

  

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.

  

The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.

Never

  

You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.

  

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.

  

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.

  

Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall.

Like

  

We can never cease to be ourselves.

Never

  

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.

  

In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility

  

My task is to make you hear, to make you feel,and, above all, to make you see. That is all, and it is everything.

  

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.

Me

  

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.

  

And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth.

  

They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares.

  

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.

  

Never test another man by your own weakness.

Never

  

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

  

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.

  

I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced

  

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.

Time

  

I saw him open his mouth wide. . . as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him.

  

There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget.

  

Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes.

  

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.

  

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.

  

I slipped the book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship.

Like

  

His face was like the autumn sky, overcast one moment and bright the next.

Like

  

A writing may be lost; a lie may be written; but what the eye has seen is truth and remains in the mind!

  

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.

Me

  

...for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence...

  

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.

Time

  

She feared the unknown as we all do, and her ignorance made the unknown infinitely vast.

  

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

  

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.

  

Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off.

Life

  

All that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men.

Life

  

I am afraid that if you want to go down into history you'll have to do something for it.

  

And a word carries far-very far-deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space.

Time

  

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.

Like , Yourself

  

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.

Like

  

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.

  

Everything belonged to him--but that was a trifle. The thing to know was what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.

  

I suppose everybody must be always just a little homesick.

  

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…

  

The man who says that he has no illusions has at least that one.

  

He existed for me, and after all it is only through me that he exists for you.

Me

  

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.

  

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.

  

And after all, one does not die of it." "Die of what?" I asked swiftly. "Of being afraid.

  

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.

  

The condemned social order has not been built up on paper and ink, and I don't fancy that a combination of paper and ink will ever put an end to it.

  

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.

  

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.

Like

  

Government in general, any government anywhere, is a thing of exquisite comicality to a discerning mind.

  

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

Life

  

Curiosity being one of the forms of self-revelation, a systematically incurious person remains always partly mysterious.

  

He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable.

  

Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put it's trust in life!

  

Rich or poor, strong or weak, who among us has not begged God for a second chance?

  

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.

Like , Think

  

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. . .

Like

  

In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent.

  

In the destructive element immerse.

  

There are more kinds of fools than one can guard against.

  

A woman's true tenderness, like the true virility of man, is expressed in action of a conquering kind.

Like

  

All idealisation makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity — it is to destroy it.

Character , Life

  

The belief in a super natural sources of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

  

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.

Me

  

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 ?

  

Mistah Kurtz--he dead.

  

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.

Me