Joseph Conrad – 23 Quotes

23 Quotes by Joseph Conrad

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

– 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

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

– 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 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

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

– 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

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

Going home must be like going to render an account.

– Joseph Conrad

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

– Joseph Conrad

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

– Joseph Conrad

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

– Joseph Conrad

I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.

– Joseph Conrad

He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.

– Joseph Conrad

A man’s real life is that accorded to him in the thoughts of other men by reason of respect or natural love.

– Joseph Conrad

It is a maudlin and indecent verity that comes out through the strength of wine.

– Joseph Conrad

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

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

A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.

– Joseph Conrad

Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praiseworthy sincerity which, while it delivers one into the hands of one’s enemies, is as likely as not to embroil one with one’s friends.

– Joseph Conrad

As to honor – you know – it’s a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn’t theirs.

– Joseph Conrad