Top 500 Joseph Conrad Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “Yet, when one thinks of it, diplomacy without force is a but a rotten reed to lean upon.”

— Joseph Conrad

352. “Do you know how I would call the nature of the present economic conditions? I would call it cannibalistic. That’s what it is! They are nourishing their greed on the quivering flesh and the warm blood of the people – nothing else.”

— Joseph Conrad

353. “His hair in falling seemed to have stuck to his chin, and had prospered in the new locality, for his beard hung down to his waist.”

— Joseph Conrad

354. “He remembered that she was pretty, and, more, that she had a special grace in the intimacy of life. She had the secret of individuality which excites and escapes.”

— Joseph Conrad

355. “Things and men have always a certain sense, a certain side by which they must be got hold of if one wants to obtain a solid grasp and a perfect command.”

— Joseph Conrad

356. “This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompaniment to my meditations.”

— Joseph Conrad

357. “A modern fleet of ships does not so much make use of the sea as exploit a highway.”

— Joseph Conrad

358. “I would just as soon have abused the old village church at home for not being a cathedral.”

— Joseph Conrad

359. “He had found the secret of keeping for ever on the run the fundamental imbecility of mankind; he had the secret of life, that confounded dying man, and he made himself master of every moment of our existence.”

— Joseph Conrad

360. “The islands are very quiet. One sees them lying about, clothed in their dark garments of leaves, in a great hush of silver and azure, where the sea without murmurs meets the sky in a ring of magic stillness.”

— Joseph Conrad

361. “One must not make too much of anything in life, good or bad.”

— Joseph Conrad

362. “The six stories in this volume are the result of some three or four years of occasional work. The dates of their writing are far apart, their origins are various. None of them are connected directly with personal experiences. In all of them the facts are inherently true, by which I mean that they are not only possible but that they have actually happened.”

— Joseph Conrad

363. “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.”

— Joseph Conrad

364. “There are things you find nothing about in books.”

— Joseph Conrad

365. “Sometimes it seems to me that man is come where he is not wanted, where there is no place for him; for if not, why should he want all the place? Why should he run about here and there making a great noise about himself, talking about the stars, disturbing the blades of grass?”

— Joseph Conrad

366. “It is very difficult to be wholly joyous or wholly sad on this earth.”

— Joseph Conrad

367. “Skepticism is the tonic of the mind .”

— Joseph Conrad

368. “I am quite willing to be the blind instrument of higher ends. To give one’s life for the cause is nothing. But to have one’s illusions destroyed – that is really almost more than one can bear.”

— Joseph Conrad

369. “The world is to the young.”

— Joseph Conrad

370. “Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin.”

— Joseph Conrad

371. “There is a kind way of assisting our fellow-creatures which is enough to break their hearts while it saves their outer envelope.”

— Joseph Conrad

372. “The earth for us is a place to live in, where we must put up with sights, with sounds, with smells, too, by Jove! – breathe dead hippo, so as to speak, and not be contaminated. And there, don’t you see? your strength comes in, the faith in your ability for the digging of unostentatious holes to bury the stuff in – your power of devotion, not to yourself, but to an obscure, back-breaking business.”

— Joseph Conrad

373. “L’atmosfera di burocrazia ucciderebbe qualsiasi cosa respirasse aria di sforzo umano, estinguerebbe parimenti speranza e timore sotto la supremazia di carta e inchiostro.”

— Joseph Conrad

374. “Sometimes it takes all my resolution and power of self-control to refrain from butting my head against the wall. I want to howl and foam at the mouth but I daren’t.”

— Joseph Conrad

375. “I can’t imagine a human being so hard up for something to do as to quarrel with me.”

— Joseph Conrad

376. “Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a centre for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing.”

— Joseph Conrad

377. “And yet is not mankind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive devotion. And what is the pursuit of truth, after all?”

— Joseph Conrad

378. “I was glad of it,” he repeated, emphatically. “You may be surprised at it, but then you haven’t gone through the experience I’ve had of her. I can tell you, it was something to remember. Of course, I got off scot free myself – as you can see. She did her best to break up my pluck for me tho’. She jolly near drove as fine a fellow as ever lived into a madhouse. What do you say to that – eh?”

— Joseph Conrad

379. “From afar at the end of Tsar Peter Straat, issued in the frosty air the tinkle of bells of the horse tramcars, appearing and disappearing in the opening between the buildings, like little toy carriages harnessed with toy horses and played with by people that appeared no bigger than children.”

— Joseph Conrad

380. “I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more – the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort – to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires – and expires, too soon, too soon – before life itself.”

— Joseph Conrad

381. “There is something going on in the sky like a decomposition, like a corruption of the air, which remains as still as ever. After all, mere clouds, which may or may not hold wind or rain. Strange that it should trouble me so. I feel as if all my sins had found me out.”

— Joseph Conrad

382. “One lives too long. Happy X-mas.”

— Joseph Conrad

383. “He had entered by then the broad, human path of inconsistencies.”

— Joseph Conrad

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

— Joseph Conrad

385. “What captivated my fancy was that I, Axel Heyst, the most detached of creatures in this earthly captivity, the veriest tramp on this earth, an indifferent stroller going through the world’s bustle – that I should have been there to step into the situation of an agent of Providence. I, a man of universal scorn and unbelief...”

— Joseph Conrad

386. “I don’t want to excuse myself; but I would like to explain – I would like somebody to understand – somebody – one person at least! You! Why not you?”

— Joseph Conrad

387. “This is glorious!′ I cried, and then i looked at the sinner by my side. He sat with his head sunk on his breast and said ‘Yes’, without raising his eyes, as if afraid to see writ large on the clear sky of the offing the reproach of his romantic conscience.”

— Joseph Conrad

388. “There is never any God in a country where men will not help themselves.”

— Joseph Conrad

389. “And incompleteness of any sort leads to trouble.”

— Joseph Conrad

390. “He was different; innocent of heart, and full of good will, which nobody wanted, this castaway, that, like a man transplanted into another planet, was separated by an immense space from his past and by an immense ignorance from his future.”

— Joseph Conrad

391. “The good author is he who contemplates without marked joy or excessive sorrow the adventures of his soul amongst criticisms.”

— Joseph Conrad

392. “She had said he had been driven away from her by a dream...”

— Joseph Conrad

393. “Don Jose Avellanos depended very much upon the devotion of his beloved Antonia. He accepted it in the benighted way of men, who, though made in God’s image, are like stone idols without sense before the smoke of certain burnt offerings.”

— Joseph Conrad

394. “The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas. Its hard absolute optimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and intolerance it contains.”

— Joseph Conrad

395. “The promises, the terrors, the hopes of eternity, are the concern of the corrupt dead; but the obvious sweetness of life belongs to living, healthy men.”

— Joseph Conrad

396. “The field of influence was great and infinitely varied – once one had conquered a name.”

— Joseph Conrad

397. “The condemned social order has not been built up on paper and ink, and I don’t fancy that a combination of paper and ink will ever put an end to it.”

— Joseph Conrad

398. “Formerly, in solitude and in silence, he had been used to think clearly and sometimes even profoundly, seeing life outside the flattering optical delusion of everlasting hope, of conventional self-deceptions, of an ever-expected happiness.”

— Joseph Conrad

399. “It was a dark story.”

— Joseph Conrad

400. “The man who can’t do most things and won’t do the rest.”

— Joseph Conrad