Quotes by Joseph Conrad

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

"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 too much."

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

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

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

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

"Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory."

"All a man can betray is his conscience."

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

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