Two women, one fat and the other slim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at me – still knitting with downcast eyes – and only just as I began to think of getting out of her way, as you would for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up. Her dress was as plain as an umbrella-cover, and she turned round without a word and preceded me into a waiting-room.

— Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad Quotes

It was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage.

— Joseph Conrad

Such book being there was wonderful enough; but still more astounding were the notes penciled in the margin and plainly referring to the text.

— Joseph Conrad

Our eyes were of no more use to us than if we had been buried miles deep in a heap of cotton-wool.

— Joseph Conrad

By an exulting and terrible cry, by the cry of inconceivable triumph and unspeakable pain.

— Joseph Conrad

He was too lazy even for a mere demagogue, for a workman orator, for a leader of labour. It was too much trouble. He required a more perfect form of ease; or it might have been that he was the victim of a philosophical unbelief in the effectivness of every human effort.

— Joseph Conrad

Ave! Old knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant.

— Joseph Conrad

Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you – smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage.

— Joseph Conrad

There is something peculiar in a small boat upon the wide seas. Over the lives born from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness.

— Joseph Conrad

He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision – he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: “’The horror! The horror!

— Joseph Conrad

If I went out with a couple of rifles and a gun bearer, and twenty or thirty beaters, to hunt a lion, I should not feel that the lion had much chance, and so the pleasure of the hunt would be lessened in proportion to the increased safety which I felt.

— Joseph Conrad

The truth travels over the earth secretly; it seeks a nest among the people. To the authorities it’s like a knife in the fire. They cannot accept it. It will cut them and burn them. Truth is your good friend and a sworn enemy of the authorities – that’s why it hides itself.

— Joseph Conrad

Give them all of my dear love and a kiss. Tell them I think of them by day, pray for them by night, and find my best comfort in their affection at all times.

— Joseph Conrad

Captain MacWhirr had sailed over the surface of the oceans as some men go skimming over the years of existence to sink gently into a placid grave, ignorant of life to the last, without ever having been made to see all it may contain of perfidy, of violence, and of terror. There are on sea and land such men thus fortunate – or thus disdained by destiny or by the sea.

— Joseph Conrad

He became a waif and stray, austerely, from conviction, as others do through drink, from vice, from some weakness of character – with deliberation, as others do in despair. This, stripped.

— Joseph Conrad

Frankly, it is not my words that I mistrust, but your minds.

— Joseph Conrad

I did not betray Mr. Kurtz – it was ordered I should never betray him – it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice. I was anxious to deal with this shadow by myself alone, – and to this day I don’t know why I was so jealous of sharing with anyone the peculiar blackness of that experience.

— Joseph Conrad

Abandoned workings had for him strong fascination. Their desolation appealed to him like the sight of human misery, whose causes are varied and profound. They might have been worthless, but also they night have been misunderstood.

— Joseph Conrad

As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and by the consistent narrowness of his outlook. But I have never been able to love what was not lovable or hate what was not hateful out of deference for some general principle. Whether there be any courage in making this admission I know not.

— Joseph Conrad

I was made to look at the convention that lurks in all truth and on the essential sincerity of falsehood.

— Joseph Conrad

The greatest of my gifts being a consummate capacity for doing nothing, I cannot even point to boredom as a rational stimulus for taking up a pen. The pen, at any rate, was there, and there is nothing wonderful in that.

— Joseph Conrad
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