Quotes by 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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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?"

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

"All a man can betray is his conscience."

"Going home must be like going to render an account."

"Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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