Toodles looked so thunderstruck that the Assistant Commissioner smiled faintly.
There’s no worse enemy and no better friend than a brother, Tuan, for one brother knows another, and in perfect knowledge is strength for good or evil.
There is never any God in a country where men will not help themselves.
We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet.
The most precise of her sayings seemed always to me to have enigmatical prolongations vanishing somewhere beyond my reach. I am reduced to suppose that she appreciated my attention and my silence. The attention she could see was quite sincere, so that the silence could not be suspected of coldness. It seemed to satisfy her. And it is to be noted that if she confided in me it was clearly not with the expectation of receiving advice, for which, indeed, she never asked.
Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is – that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose.
Night, the inevitable reward of men’s faithful labors on this earth...
Conrad’s distrust of democracy sprang from his doubts whether the propagation of democracy as an aim in itself could solve any problems. He thought that, in view of the weakness of human nature and of the “criminal” character of society, democracy offered boundless opportunities for demagogues and charlatans.
A half-naked, betel-chewing pessimist stood upon the bank of the tropical river, on the edge of the still and immense forests; a man angry, powerless, empty-handed, with a cry of bitter discontent ready on his lips; a cry that, had it come out, would have rung through the virgin solitudes of the woods as true, as great, as profound, as any philosophical shriek that ever came from the depths of an easy chair to disturb the impure wilderness of chimneys and roofs.
The true Razumov had his being in the willed, in the determined future – in that future menaced by the lawlessness of autocracy – for autocracy knows no law – and the lawlessness of revolution.
To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe.
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The common misery of destitution would have made a bitter mockery of a marked insistence on social differences. Gaspar.
No, I’d rather be like myself, bad as I am.
Then the earth for you is only a standing place – and whether to be like this is your loss or your gain I won’t pretend to say.
Those who tow’rds Acheron do not descend.
The real evils, indeed, of Emma’s situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself; these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments.
It was, in the night, as though I had been faced by my own reflection in the depths of a somber and immense mirror.
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. By Jove! I’ve never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.
Thither went afterwards the Chosen Vessel, To bring back comfort thence unto that Faith, Which of salvation’s way is the beginning.