Top 500 Joseph Conrad Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Follow your bliss. Find where it is and don’t be afraid to follow it.”

— Joseph Conrad

52. “But passion most dissembles, yet betrays, Even by its darkness; as the blackest sky Foretells the heaviest tempest.”

— Joseph Conrad

53. “A ship in dock, surrounded by quays and the walls of warehouses, has the appearance of a prisoner meditating upon freedom in the sadness of a free spirit put under restraint.”

— Joseph Conrad

54. “The air of the New World seems favorable to the art of declamation.”

— Joseph Conrad

55. “In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility.”

— Joseph Conrad

56. “Everything can be found at sea according to the spirit of your quest.”

— Joseph Conrad

57. “Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence – but more generally takes the form of apathy.”

— Joseph Conrad

58. “No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence – that which makes its truth, its meaning – its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream – alone.”

— Joseph Conrad

59. “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

60. “True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible.”

— Joseph Conrad

61. “I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced.”

— Joseph Conrad

62. “Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.”

— Joseph Conrad

63. “Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is – that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose.”

— Joseph Conrad

64. “He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified.”

— Joseph Conrad

65. “He struggled with himself, too. I saw it – I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.”

— Joseph Conrad

66. “As a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement.”

— Joseph Conrad

67. “All that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men.”

— Joseph Conrad

68. “Never test another man by your own weakness.”

— Joseph Conrad

69. “And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible.”

— Joseph Conrad

70. “The blight of futility that lies in wait for men’s speeches had fallen upon our conversation and made it a thing of empty sounds.”

— Joseph Conrad

71. “Reality, as usual, beats fiction out of sight.”

— Joseph Conrad

72. “Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.”

— Joseph Conrad

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

— Joseph Conrad

74. “Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing.”

— Joseph Conrad

75. “Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.”

— Joseph Conrad

76. “It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream – making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams.”

— Joseph Conrad

77. “I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go.”

— Joseph Conrad

78. “For the great mass of mankind the only saving grace that is needed is steady fidelity to what is nearest to hand and heart in the short moment of each human effort.”

— Joseph Conrad

79. “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, and always mute with an air of whispering, “Come and find out”.”

— Joseph Conrad

80. “Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straight-forward pathway had been lost.”

— Joseph Conrad

81. “A fool has more ideas than a wise man can foresee.”

— Joseph Conrad

82. “All a man can betray is his conscience.”

— Joseph Conrad

83. “The man who says that he has no illusions has at least that one.”

— Joseph Conrad

84. “An author writes only half the book. The rest is written by readers.”

— Joseph Conrad

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

— Joseph Conrad

86. “We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know nothing real beyond the words. Nobody knows what suffering or sacrifice mean – except, perhaps the victims of the mysterious purpose of these illusions.”

— Joseph Conrad

87. “He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference. The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion.”

— Joseph Conrad

88. “It is when we try to grapple with another man’s intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun.”

— Joseph Conrad

89. “I do not know whether I have been a good seaman, but I know I have been a very faithful one.”

— Joseph Conrad

90. “I slipped the book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship.”

— Joseph Conrad

91. “The world of finance is a mysterious world in which, incredible as the fact may appear, evaporation precedes liquidation.”

— Joseph Conrad

92. “They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience.”

— Joseph Conrad

93. “Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.”

— Joseph Conrad

94. “He had a good healthy sense of meum, and as little of tuum as he could help.”

— Joseph Conrad

95. “There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies...”

— Joseph Conrad

96. “The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement – but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims.”

— Joseph Conrad

97. “It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull.”

— Joseph Conrad

98. “Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please.”

— Joseph Conrad

99. “Violence is not a catalyst but a diversion.”

— Joseph Conrad

100. “When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate those savages – hate them to the death.”

— Joseph Conrad