Top 500 Joseph Conrad Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “The encounter did not leave behind with Chief Inspector Heat that satisfactory sense of superiority the members of the police force get from the unofficial but intimate side of their intercourse with the criminal classes, by which the vanity of power is soothed, and the vulgar love of domination over our fellow creatures is flattered as worthily as it deserves.”

— Joseph Conrad

402. “I can’t afford to despise anything. An absurdity may be the starting-point of the most dangerous complications.”

— Joseph Conrad

403. “I suppose I have done a certain amount of harm, since I allowed myself to be tempted into action. It seemed innocent enough, but all action is bound to be harmful. It is devilish. That is why this world is evil upon the whole. But I have done with it! I shall never lift a little finger again. At one time I thought that intelligent observation of facts was the best way of cheating the time which is allotted to us whether we want it or not; but now I, have done with observation, too.”

— Joseph Conrad

404. “Are not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention? I have given up expecting those last words, whose ring, if they could only be pronounced, would shake both heaven and earth. There is never time to say our last word – the last word of our love, of our desire, faith, remorse, submission, revolt. The heaven and earth must not be shaken. I suppose – at least, not by us who know so many truths about either.”

— Joseph Conrad

405. “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

406. “You will learn soon how not to be faint-hearted. A man has got to learn everything – and that’s what so many of them youngsters don’t understand.”

— Joseph Conrad

407. “The audacity of youth reckons upon what it fancies an unlimited time at its disposal; but a millionaire has unlimited means in his hand – which is better. One’s time on earth is an uncertain quantity, but about the long reach of millions there is no doubt.”

— Joseph Conrad

408. “And in this case his great practice in it was assisted by hate, which, like love, has an eloquence of its own.”

— Joseph Conrad

409. “Principles won’t do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags-rags that wouldfly off at the first good shake.”

— Joseph Conrad

410. “The girl he had come across, of whom he had possessed himself, to whose presence he was not yet accustomed, with whom he did not yet know how to live; that human being so near and still so strange, gave him a greater sense of his own reality than he had ever known in all his life.”

— Joseph Conrad

411. “Occupation? Put down, well – tourists. We’ve been called harder names before now;.”

— Joseph Conrad

412. “His mind, cool, alert, watched it sink there with a sort of vague concern at the absurdity of the occupation, till it rested at the bottom, deep down, where our unexpressed longings lie.”

— Joseph Conrad

413. “Night, the inevitable reward of men’s faithful labors on this earth...”

— Joseph Conrad

414. “I suppose at that period I did exist on food in the usual way; but the memory is now that in those days life was sustained on invincible anguish, as a sort of infernal stimulant exciting and consuming at the same time.”

— Joseph Conrad

415. “He inspired uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust – just uneasiness – nothing more. You have no idea how effective such a... a... faculty can be.”

— Joseph Conrad

416. “It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due? Hadn’t he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn’t. I could not tell her.”

— Joseph Conrad

417. “D’un tratto le tenebre si tramutarono in acqua.”

— Joseph Conrad

418. “A diplomatic statement... is a statement of which everything is true but the sentiment which seems to prompt it.”

— Joseph Conrad

419. “The point was in his being a gifted creature, and that of all his gifts the one that stood out pre-eminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence, was his ability to talk, his words – the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness. “The.”

— Joseph Conrad

420. “We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil.”

— Joseph Conrad

421. “And this stillness of life did not the least resemble a peace.”

— Joseph Conrad

422. “He cast his eyes upwards and stood amazed. The snow had ceased to fall, and now, as if by a miracle, he saw above his head the clear black sky of the northern winter, decorated with the sumptuous fires of the stars. It was a canopy fit for the resplendent purity of the snows.”

— Joseph Conrad

423. “But both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of the mysteries it had penetrated fought for the possession of that soul satiated with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of all the appearances of success and power.”

— Joseph Conrad

424. “I remember staying to look at it for a long time, as one would linger within reach of a consoling whisper. The sky was pearly grey. It was one of those overcast days so rare in the tropics, in which memories crowd upon one, memories of other shores, of other faces.”

— Joseph Conrad

425. “It had come into her mind that for life to be large and full, it must contain the care of the past and of the future in every passing moment of the present.”

— Joseph Conrad

426. “He was easily sorry for people.”

— Joseph Conrad

427. “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

428. “Anything – anything can be done in this country. That’s what I say; nobody here, you understand, here, can endanger your position. And why? You stand the climate – you outlast them all.”

— Joseph Conrad

429. “O Crassus, tell us, For thou dost know, what is the taste of gold?”

— Joseph Conrad

430. “The sun was low; and leaning forward side by side, they seemed to be tugging painfully uphill their two ridiculous shadows of unequal length, that trailed behind them slowly over the tall grass without bending a single blade.”

— Joseph Conrad

431. “It was unreal as everything else – as the philanthropic pretense of the whole concern, as their government, as their show of work.”

— Joseph Conrad

432. “I observed with assumed innocence that no man was safe from trouble in this world.”

— Joseph Conrad

433. “They give you wages as they’d fling a bone to a dog, and they expect you to be grateful. It’s worse than slavery. You don’t expect a slave that’s bought for money to be grateful. And if you sell your work – what is it but selling your own self? You’ve got so many days to live and you sell them one after another. Hey? Who can pay me enough for my life? Ah! But they throw at you your week’s money and expect you to say, “thank you” before you pick it up.”

— Joseph Conrad

434. “One gets sometimes such a flash of inspiration, you know. I did say the right thing, though indeed he could not have been more irretrievably lost than he was at this very moment, when the foundations of our intimacy were being laid – to endure – to endure – even to the end – even beyond.”

— Joseph Conrad

435. “The solitude of the sea intensifies the thoughts and the facts of one’s experience which seems to lie at the very centre of the world, as the ship which carries one always remains the centre figure of the round horizon.”

— Joseph Conrad

436. “It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing, that feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy beetle crawled on – which was just what you wanted it to do. Where the pilgrims imagined it crawled to I don’t know. To some place where they expected to get something, I bet! For me it crawled toward Kurtz – exclusively; but when the steam-pipes started leaking we crawled very slow.”

— Joseph Conrad

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

— Joseph Conrad

438. “I went a little farther, then still a little farther – till I had gone so far that I don’t know how I’ll ever get back.”

— Joseph Conrad

439. “I saw the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot lust...”

— Joseph Conrad

440. “In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny.”

— Joseph Conrad

441. “I might just as well have ordered a tree not to sway in the wind.”

— Joseph Conrad

442. “Hadn’t I been told in all the tones of jealousy and admiration that he had collected, bartered, swindled, or stolen more ivory than all the other agents together?”

— Joseph Conrad

443. “Between the five of us there was the strong bond of the sea, and also the fellowship of the craft, which no amount of enthusiasm for yatching, cruising, and so on can give, since one is only the amusement of life and the other is life itself.”

— Joseph Conrad

444. “It was unreal as everything else – as the philanthropic pretense of the whole concern, as their talk, as their government, as their show of work. The only real feeling was a desire to get appointed to a trading post where ivory was to be had, so that they could earn percentages.”

— Joseph Conrad

445. “There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare for yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect.”

— Joseph Conrad

446. “This was the foreman – a boiler-maker by trade – a good worker. He was a lank, bony, yellow-faced man, with big intense eyes. His aspect was worried, and his head was as bald as the palm of my hand; but 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

447. “This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.”

— Joseph Conrad

448. “I seemed at one bound to have been transported into some lightless region of subtle horrors, where pure, uncomplicated savagery was a posi-tive relief, being something that had a right to exist – obviously – in the sunshine.”

— Joseph Conrad

449. “It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention.”

— Joseph Conrad

450. “Lord, lay me down as a stone and raise me up as a loaf!”

— Joseph Conrad