Joseph Conrad Quotes

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Joseph Conrad

Profession : Novelist

Birth : December 3, 1857

Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put its trust in life.

Joseph Conrad

Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life.

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

The sea - this truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness - has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.

Joseph Conrad

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.

Joseph Conrad

Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.

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.

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

Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

Joseph Conrad

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

Joseph Conrad

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

Joseph Conrad

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

Joseph Conrad

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.

Joseph Conrad

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

Joseph Conrad

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

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

Joseph Conrad

A word carries far, very far, deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space.

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

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

Joseph Conrad

Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.

Joseph Conrad