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I Would Not Unduly Praise The Virtue Of Restraint. It Is Often Merely Temperamental. But It Is Not Always A Sign Of Coldness. It May Be Pride. There Can Be Nothing More Humiliating Than To See The Shaft Of One's Emotion Miss The Mark Of Either Laughter Or Tears. Nothing More Humiliating! And This For The Reason That Should The Mark Be Missed, Should The Open Display Of Emotion Fail To Move, Then It Must Perish Unavoidably In Disgust Or Contempt.

-Joseph Conrad

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I Would Not Unduly

Joseph Conrad

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I Would Not Unduly Praise The Virtue Of Restraint. It Is Often Merely Temperamental. But It Is Not Always A Sign Of Coldness. It May Be Pride. There Can Be Nothing More Humiliating Than To See The Shaft Of One's Emotion Miss The Mark Of Either Laughter Or Tears. Nothing More Humiliating! And This For The Reason That Should The Mark Be Missed, Should The Open Display Of Emotion Fail To Move, Then It Must Perish Unavoidably In Disgust Or Contempt.

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Danger Lies In The Writer Becoming The Victim Of His Own Exaggeration, Losing The Exact Notion Of Sincerity, And In The End Coming To Despise Truth Itself As Something Too Cold, Too Blunt For His Purpose -- As, In Fact, Not Good Enough For His Insistent Emotion. From Laughter And Tears The Descent Is Easy To Sniveling And Giggles.

Exaggeration Is

We Penetrated Deeper And Deeper Into The Heart Of Darkness

Heart Of Darkness

They Trespassed Upon My Thoughts. They Were Intruders Whose Knowledge Of Life Was To Me An Irritating Pretense, Because I Felt So Sure They Could Not Possibly Know The Things I Knew. Their Bearing, Which Was Simply The Bearing Of Commonplace Individuals Going About Their Business In The Assurance Of Perfect Safety, Was Offensive To Me Like The Outrageous Flauntings Of Folly In The Face Of A Danger It Is Unable To Comprehend. I Had No Particular Desire To Enlighten Them, But I Had Some Difficulty In Restraining Myself From Laughing In Their Faces, So Full Of Stupid Importance.

The Hair Of His Face, On The Contrary, Carroty And Flaming, Resembled A Growth Of Copper Wire Clipped Short To The Line Of The Lip; While, No Matter How Close He Shaved, Fiery Metallic Gleams Passed, When He Moved His Head, Over The Surface Of His Cheeks.

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.

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. It Is As If Loneliness Were A Hard And Absolute Condition Of Existence; The Envelope Of Flesh And Blood On Which Our Eyes Are Fixed Melts Before The Outstretched Hand, And There Remains Only The Capricious, Unconsolable And Elusive Spirit That No Eye Can Follow, No Hand Can Grasp.

It Is A Maudlin And Indecent Verity That Comes Out Through The Strength Of Wine.

A Task, Any Task, Undertaken In An Adventurous Spirit Acquires The Merit Of Romance.

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.

There Are Men Here And There To Whom The Whole Of Life Is Like An After-dinner Hour With A Cigar; Easy, Pleasant, Empty, Perhaps Enlivened By Some Fable Of Strife To Be Forgotten - Before The End Is Told - Even If There Happens To Be Any End To It.

A Writer Without Interest Or Sympathy For The Foibles Of His Fellow Man Is Not Conceivable As A Writer.

It Is Very Difficult To Be Wholly Joyous Or Wholly Sad On This Earth. The Comic, When It Is Human, Soon Takes Upon Itself A Face Of Pain; And Some Of Our Griefs (some Only, Not All, For It Is The Capacity For Suffering Which Makes Man August In The Eyes Of Men) Have Their Source In Weaknesses Which Must Be Recognized With Smiling Com Passion As The Common Inheritance Of Us All.

There Is A Taint Of Death, A Flavour Of Mortality In Lies.

We Live As We Dream - Alone.

There Is A Kind Way Of Assisting Our Fellow-creatures Which Is Enough To Break Their Hearts While It Saves Their Outer Envelope.

The Word 'ivory' Rang In The Air, Was Whispered, Was Sighed. You Would Think They Were Praying To It. A Taint Of Imbecile Rapacity Blew Through It All, Like A Whiff From Some Corpse. By Jove! I've Never Seen Anything So Unreal In My Life. And Outside, The Silent Wilderness Surrounding This Cleared Speck On The Earth Struck Me As Something Great And Invincible, Like Evil Or Truth, Waiting Patiently For The Passing Away Of This Fantastic Invasion.

An Artist Is A Man Of Action, Whether He Creates A Personality, Invents An Expedient, Or Finds The Issue Of A Complicated Situation.

You Can T, In Sound Morals, Condemn A Man For Taking Care Of His Own Integrity. It Is His Clear Duty. And Least Of All Can You Condemn An Artist Pursuing, However Humbly And Imperfectly, A Creative Aim. In That Interior World Where His Thought And His Emotions Go Seeking For The Experience Of Imagined Adventures, There Are No Policemen, No Law, No Pressure Of Circumstance Or Dread Of Opinion To Keep Him Within Bounds. Who Then Is Going To Say Nay To His Temptations If Not His Conscience?

One Can't Live With One's Finger Everlastingly On One's Pulse.

It Echoed Loudly Within Him Because He Was Hollow At The Core.

The Dreams Of Men, The Seed Of Commonwealth, The Germs Of Empires.

A Writing May Be Lost; A Lie May Be Written; But What The Eye Has Seen Is Truth And Remains In The Mind!

We Owe Much To The Fruitful Meditation Of Our Sages, But A Sane View Of Life Is, After All, Elaborated Mainly In The Kitchen.

He Hated All This, And Somehow He Couldn't Get Away.

Lights Of Ships Moved In The Fairway-a Great Stir Of Lights Going Up And Going Down. And Farther West On The Upper Reaches The Place Of The Monstrous Town Was Still Marked Ominously On The Sky, A Brooding Gloom In Sunshine, A Lurid Glare Under The Stars.

Some Of Us, Regarding The Ocean With Understanding And Affection, Have Seen It Looking Old, As If The Immemorial Ages Had Been Stirred Up From The Undisturbed Bottom Of Ooze. For It Is A Gale Of Wind That Makes The Sea Look Old.

The Nellie, A Cruising Yawl, Swung To Her Anchor Without A Flutter Of The Sails, And Was At Rest. The Flood Had Made, The Wind Was Nearly Calm, And Being Bound Down The River, The Only Thing For It Was To Come And Wait For The Turn Of The Tide.

It Is Not Justice The Servant Of Men, But Accident, Hazard, Fortune-the Ally Of Patient Time-that Holds An Even And Scrupulous Balance.

Any Work That Aspires, However Humbly, To The Condition Of Art Should Carry Its Justification In Every Line.

He Has To Live In The Midst Of The Incomprehensible, Which Is Also Detestable.

Let A Fool Be Made Serviceable According To His Folly.

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.

The End (goal) Of Art Is To Figure The Hidden Meaning Of Things And Not Their Appearance; For In This Profound Truth Lies Their True Reality, Which Does Not Appear In Their External Outlines.

Any Fool Can Carry On, But A Wise Man Knows How To Shorten Sail In Time.

Art Is Long And Life Is Short, And Success Is Very Far Off.

I Have Been Called Romantic. Well, That Can't Be Helped. But Stay. I Seem To Remember That I Have Been Called A Realist Also. And As That Charge Too Can Be Made Out, Let Us Try To Live Up To It, At Whatever Cost, For A Change.

Every Age Is Fed On Illusions, Lest Men Should Renounce Life Early And The Human Race Come To An End.

All Creative Art Is Magic , Is Evocation Of The Unseen In Forms Persuasive, Enlightening, Familiar And Surprising, For The Edification Of Mankind , Pinned Down By The Conditions Of Its Existence To The Earnest Consideration Of The Most Insignificant Tides Of Reality .

For All That Has Been Said Of The Love That Certain Natures (on Shore) Have Professed For It, For All The Celebrations It Has Been The Object Of In Prose And Song, The Sea Has Never Been Friendly To Man. At Most It Has Been The Accomplice Of Human Restlessness.

Writing In English Is Like Throwing Mud At A Wall.

The Moon Had Spread Over Everything A Thin Layer Of Silver - Over The Rank Grass, Over The Mud, Upon The Wall Of Matted Vegetation Standing Higher Than The Wall Of A Temple, Over The Great River I Could See Through A Sombre Gap Glittering, Glittering, As It Flowed Broadly By Without A Murmur. All This Was Great, Expectant, Mute, While The Man Jabbered About Himself.

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 Like What Is In The Work -- The Chance To Find Yourself.

Finding Yourself

... It Was Written I Should Be Loyal To The Nightmare Of My Choice.

Anything Approaching The Change That Came Over His Features I Have Never Seen Before, And Hope Never To See Again. Oh, I Wasn't Touched. I Was Fascinated. It Was As Though A Veil Had Been Rent. I Saw On That Ivory Face The Expression Of Sombre Pride, Of Ruthless Power, Of Craven Terror--of An Intense And Hopeless Despair. Did He Live His Life Again In Every Detail Of Desire, Temptation, And Surrender During That Supreme Moment Of Complete Knowledge? He Cried In A Whisper At Some Image, At Some Vision--he Cried Out Twice, A Cry That Was No More Than A Breath: The Horror! The Horror!

I Don't Like Work... But I Like What Is In Work - The Chance To Find Yourself. Your Own Reality - For Yourself, Not For Others - Which No Other Man Can Ever Know.

A Man That Is Born Falls Into A Dream Like A Man Who Falls Into The Sea.

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?

All Ambitions Are Lawful Except Those Which Climb Upward On The Miseries Or Credulities Of Mankind.

To Have His Path Made Clear For Him Is The Aspiration Of Every Human Being In Our Beclouded And Tempestuous Existence.

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.

Claiming That The Destructive Practice Of Mountaintop Removal Mining, Blowing The Tops Off Mountains To Get At The Coal Beneath, Performs The "necessary" Function Of Creating Flat Land For Development To Tear Treasure Out Of The Bowels Of The Land Was Their Desire, With No More Moral Purpose At The Back Of It Than There Is In Burglars Breaking Into A Safe.

It's Only Those Who Do Nothing That Make No Mistakes, I Suppose.

All One's Work Might Have Been Better Done; But This Is A Sort Of Reflection A Worker Must Put Aside Courageously If He Doesn't Mean Every One Of His Conceptions To Remain Forever A Private Vision, An Evanescent Reverie.

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.

Action Is Consolatory. It Is The Enemy Of Thought And The Friend Of Flattering Illusions.

I Have Wrestled With Death. It Is The Most Unexciting Contest You Can Imagine.

That Faculty Of Beholding At A Hint The Face Of His Desire And The Shape Of His Dream, Without Which The Earth Would Know No Lover And No Adventurer.

Everybody Had To Be Thoroughly Understood Before Being Accepted.

I Suppose Everybody Must Be Always Just A Little Homesick.

Let Them Think What They Liked, But I Didn't Mean To Drown Myself. I Meant To Swim Till I Sank -- But That's Not The Same Thing.

All Roads Are Long Which Lead To One's Heart's Desire.

We Couldn't Understand Because We Were Too Far... And Could Not Remember Because We Were Traveling In The Night Of First Ages, Those Ages That Had Gone, Leaving Hardly A Sign... And No Memories.

My Task Which I Am Trying To Achieve Is, By The Power Of The Written Word, To Make You Hear, To Make You Feel — It Is, Before All, To Make You See. That — And No More, And It Is Everything. If I Succeed, You Shall Find There According To Your Deserts: Encouragement, Consolation, Fear, Charm — All You Demand; And, Perhaps, Also That Glimpse Of Truth For Which You Have Forgotten To Ask.

They Were Conquerors, And For That You Want Only Brute Force--nothing To Boast Of, When You Have It, Since Your Strength Is Just An Accident Arising From The Weakness Of Others.

Nations It May Be Have Fashioned Their Governments, But The Governments Have Paid Them Back In The Same Coin.

It Is Respectable To Have No Illusions, And Safe, And Profitable And Dull.

Being A Woman Is A Terribly Difficult Task, Since It Consists Principally In Dealing With Men.

The Offing Was Barred By A Black Bank Of Clouds, And The Tranquil Water-way Leading To The Uttermost Ends Of The Earth Flowed Somber Under An Overcast Sky--seemed To Lead Into The Heart Of An Immense Darkness.

The Artist In His Calling Of Interpreter Creates Because He Must. He Is So Much Of A Voice That, For Him, Silence Is Like Death

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.

Beyond The Fence The Forest Stood Up Spectrally In The Moonlight, And Through The Dim Stir, Through The Faint Sounds Of That Lamentable Courtyard, The Silence Of The Land Went Home To One's Very Heart - Its Mystery, Its Greatness, The Amazing Reality Of Its Concealed Life.

The Atmosphere Of Officialdom Would Kill Anything That Breathes The Air Of Human Endeavour, Would Extinguish Hope And Fear Alike In The Supremacy Of Paper And Ink.

Life Knows Us Not And We Do Not Know Life—-we Don’t Know Even Our Own Thoughts. Half The Words We Use Have No Meaning Whatever And Of The Other Half Each Man Understands Each Word After The Fashion Of His Own Folly And Conceit. Faith Is A Myth And Beliefs Shift Like Mists On The Shore; Thoughts Vanish; Words, Once Pronounced, Die; And The Memory Of Yesterday Is As Shadowy As The Hope Of Tomorrow

Everything Belonged To Him. It Made Me Hold My Breath In Expectation Of Hearing The Wilderness Burst Into Prodigious Peal Of Laughter That Would Shake The Fixed Stars In Their Places.

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.

For A Time I Would Feel I Belonged Still To A World Of Straightforward Facts; But The Feeling Would Not Last Long. Something Would Turn Up To Scare It Away.

A Man That Is Born Falls Into A Dream Like A Man Who Falls Into The Sea. If He Tries To Climb Out Into The Air As Inexperienced People Endeavor To Do, He Drowns.

One Ship Is Very Much Like Another And The Sea Is Always The Same. 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.

The Artist Appeals To That Part Of Our Being Which Is Not Dependent On Wisdom; To That In Us Which Is A Gift And Not An Acquisition-and Therefore, More Permanently Enduring. He Speaks To Our Capacity For Delight And Wonder, To The Sense Of Mystery Surrounding Our Lives; To Our Sense Of Pity, And Beauty And Pain.

I Have Wrestled With Death. It Is The Most Unexciting Contest You Can Imagine. It Takes Place In An Impalpable Greyness, With Nothing Underfoot, With Nothing Around, Without Spectators, Without Clamour, Without Glory, Without The Great Desire Of Victory, Without The Great Fear Of Defeat, In A Sickly Atmostphere Of Tepid Scepticism, Without Much Belief In Your Own Right, And Still Less In That Of Your Adversary.

My Task, Which I Am Trying To Achieve Is, By The Power Of The Written Word, To Make You Hear, To Make You Feel--it Is, Before All, To Make You See.

Society Was Calling To Its Accomplished Child To Come, To Be Taken Care Of, To Be Instructed, To Be Judged, To Be Condemned; It Called Him To Return To That Rubbish Heap From Which He Had Wandered Away, So That Justice Could Be Done.

All Ambitions Are Lawful Except Those Which Climb Upward On The Miseries Or Credulities Of Mankind. All Intellectual And Artistic Ambitions Are Permissible, Up To And Even Beyond The Limit Of Prudent Sanity. They Can Hurt No One.

The Ocean Has The Conscienceless Temper Of A Savage Autocrat Spoiled By Much Adulation

I Can't Imagine A Human Being So Hard Up For Something To Do As To Quarrel With Me.

The Belief In A Supernatural Source Of Evil Is Not Necessary; Men Alone Are Quite Capable Of Every Wickedness.

The Mind Of Man Is Capable Of Anything--because Everything Is In It, All The Past As Well As The Future

There Is Nothing More Enticing, Disenchanting, And Enslaving Than The Life At Sea.

The Sea Has Never Been Friendly To Man. At Most It Has Been The Accomplice Of Human Restlessness.

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.

Egoism , Which Is The Moving Force Of The World, And Altruism , Which Is Its Morality , These Two Contradictory Instincts , Of Which One Is So Plain And The Other So Mysterious, Cannot Serve Us Unless In The Incomprehensible Alliance Of Their Irreconcilable Antagonism.

Your Strength Is Just An Accident Owed To The Weakness Of Others.

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.

A Word Carries Far, Very Far, Deals Destruction Through Time As The Bullets Go Flying Through Space.

Youth Is Insolent; It Is Its Right - Its Necessity; It Has Got To Assert Itself, And All Assertion In This World Of Doubts Is A Defiance, Is An Insolence.

The Very Young Have, Properly Speaking, No Moments. It Is The Privilege Of Early Youth To Live In Advance Of Its Days In All The Beautiful Continuity Of Hope Which Knows No Pauses And No Introspection.

Vanity Plays Lurid Tricks With Our Memory.

We Looked At The Venerable Stream Not In The Vivid Flush Of A Short Day That Comes And Departs Forever, But In The August Light Of Abiding Memories.

I Found Myself Back In The Sepulchral City Resenting The Sight Of People Hurrying Through The Streets To Filch A Little Money From Each Other, To Devour Their Infamous Cookery, To Gulp Their Unwholesome Beer, To Dream Their Insignificant And Silly Dreams. They Trespassed Upon My Thoughts.

The Vilest Scramble For Loot That Ever Disfigured The History Of Human Conscience.

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

She Feared The Unknown As We All Do, And Her Ignorance Made The Unknown Infinitely Vast.

I Remember My Youth And The Feeling That Will Never Come Back Any More

Nowhere Else Than Upon The Sea Do The Days, Weeks, And Months Fall Away Quicker Into The Past. They Seem To Be Left Astern As Easily As The Light Air-bubbles In The Swirls Of The Ship's Wake.

A Man's Real Life Is That Accorded To Him In The Thoughts Of Other Men By Reason Of Respect Or Natural Love.

Being Myself Animated By Feelings Of Affection Toward My Fellowmen, I Am Saddened By The Modern System Of Advertising. Whatever Evidence It Offers Of Enterprise, Ingenuity, Impudence, And Resource In Certain Individuals, It Proves To My Mind The Wide Prevalence Of That Form Of Mental Degradation Which Is Called Gullibility.

Facing It, Always Facing It, That's The Way To Get Through. Face It.

This Magnificent Butterfly Finds A Little Heap Of Dirt And Sits Still On It; But Man Will Never On His Heap Of Mud Keep Still.

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.

My Task Is To Make You Hear, Feel And See. That And No More, And That Is Everything.

The Reaches Opened Before Us And Closed Behind, As If The Forest Had Stepped Leisurely Across The Water To Bar The Way For Our Return. We Penetrated Deeper And Deeper Into The Heart Of Darkness.

Follow Your Bliss. Find Where It Is And Don't Be Afraid To Follow It.

The Vision Seemed To Enter The House With Me-the Stretcher, The Phantom-bearers, The Wild Crowd Of Obedient Worshippers, The Gloom Of The Forests, The Glitter Of The Reach Between The Murky Bends, The Beat Of The Drum, Regular And Muffled Like The Beating Of A Heart-the Heart Of A Conquering Darkness.

A Modern Fleet Of Ships Does Not So Much Make Use Of The Sea As Exploit A Highway.

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.

Joy And Sorrow In This World Pass Into Each Other, Mingling Their Forms And Their Murmurs In The Twilight Of Life As Mysterious As An Overshadowed Ocean, While The Dazzling Brightness Of Supreme Hopes Lies Far Off, Fascinating And Still, On The Distant Edge Of The Horizon

They Had Behind Them, To My Mind, The Terrific Suggestiveness Of Words Heard In Dreams, Of Phrases Spoken In Nightmares.

There Is No Peace And No Rest In The Development Of Material Interests. They Have Their Law, And Their Justice. But It Is Founded On Expediency, And Is Inhuman; It Is Without Rectitude, Without The Continuity And The Force That Can Be Found Only In A Moral Principle.

You Must Squeeze Out Of Yourself Every Sensation, Every Thought, Every Image, - Mercilessly, Without Reserve And Without Remorse: You Must Search The Darkest Corners Of Your Heart, The Most Remote Recesses Of Your Brain, - You Must Search Them For The Image, For The Glamour, For The Right Expression. And You Must Do It Sincerely, At Any Cost: You Must Do It So That At The End Of Your Day's Work You Should Feel Exhausted, Emptied Of Every Sensation And Every Thought, With A Blank Mind And An Aching Heart, With The Notion That There Is Nothing, - Nothing Left In You.

The Mysteries Of A Universe Made Of Drops Of Fire And Clods Of Mud Do Not Concern Us In The Least. The Fate Of Humanity Condemned Ultimately To Perish From Cold Is Not Worth Troubling About. If You Take It To Heart It Becomes An Unendurable Tragedy. If You Believe In Improvement You Must Weep, For The Attained Perfection Must End In Cold, Darkness And Silence. In A Dispassionate View The Ardour For Reform, Improvement For Virtue, And Knowledge, And Even For Beauty Is Only A Vain Sticking Up For Appearances As Though One Were Anxious About The Cut Of One's Clothes In A Community Of Blind Men.

The Old River In Its Broad Reach Rested Unruffled At The Decline Of Day, After Ages Of Good Service Done To The Race That Peopled Its Banks, Spread Out In The Tranquil Dignity Of A Waterway Leading To The Uttermost Ends Of The Earth.

A Fool Has More Ideas Than A Wise Man Can Foresee.

There Is No Credulity So Eager And Blind As The Credulity Of Covetousness, Which, In Its Universal Extent, Measures The Moral Misery And The Intellectual Destitution Of Mankind.

God Is For Men, And Religion For Women.

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.

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.

I Can't Tell If A Straw Ever Saved A Drowning Man, But I Know That A Mere Glance Is Enough To Make Dspair Pause. For In Truth, We Who Are Creatures Of Impulse, Are Creatures Of Despair.

The Terrorist And The Policeman Both Come From The Same Basket. Revolution, Legality--counter-moves In The Same Game; Forms Of Idleness At Bottom Identical.

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".

The Westerly Wind Asserting His Sway From The South-west Quarter Is Often Like A Monarch Gone Mad, Driving Forth With Wild Imprecations The Most Faithful Of His Courtiers To Shipwreck, Disaster, And Death.

But His Soul Was Mad. Being Alone In The Wilderness, It Had Looked Within Itself And, By Heavens I Tell You, It Had Gone Mad.

It Is My Belief No Man Ever Understands Quite His Own Artful Dodges To Escape From The Grim Shadow Of Self Knowledge.

Protection Is The First Necessity Of Opulence And Luxury.

One Wonders That There Can Be Found A Man Courageous Enough To Occupy The Post. It Is A Matter Of Meditation. Having Given It A Few Minutes I Come To The Conclusion In The Serenity Of My Heart And The Peace Of My Conscience That He Must Be Either An Extreme Megalomaniac Or An Utterly Unconscious Being.

I Sit Down Religiously Every Morning, I Sit Down For Eight Hours Every Day - And The Sitting Down Is All.

Gossip Is What No One Claims To Like, But Everybody Enjoys.

Analytical Philosophy Was Very Interesting. It Always Struck Me As Being Very Interesting And Full Of Tremendous Intellectual Curiosities. It Is Wonderful To See The Mind At Work In Such An Intense Manner, But, For Me, It Was Still Too Far Removed From My Own Issues.

To Be Busy With Material Affairs Is The Best Preservative Against Reflection, Fears, Doubts ... All These Things Which Stand In The Way Of Achievement. I Suppose A Fellow Proposing To Cut His Throat Would Experience A Sort Of Relief While Occupied In Stropping His Razor Carefully.

You Can't Breathe Dead Hippo Waking, Sleeping, And Eating, And At The Same Time Keep Your Precarious Grip On Existence.

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.

The Real Significance Of Crime Is In Its Being A Breach Of Faith With The Community Of Mankind.

The Mind Of Man Is Capable Of Anything--because Everything Is In It, All The Past As Well As All The Future. What Was There After All? Joy, Fear, Sorrow, Devotion, Valor, Rage--who Can Tell?--but Truth--truth Stripped Of Its Cloak Of Time.

I Couldn't Have Felt More Of Lonely Desolation Somehow, Had I Been Robbed Of A Belief Or Had Missed My Destiny In Life.

Never Test Another Man By Your Own Weakness.

I Would Not Unduly Praise The Virtue Of Restraint. It Is Often Merely Temperamental. But It Is Not Always A Sign Of Coldness. It May Be Pride. There Can Be Nothing More Humiliating Than To See The Shaft Of One's Emotion Miss The Mark Of Either Laughter Or Tears. Nothing More Humiliating! And This For The Reason That Should The Mark Be Missed, Should The Open Display Of Emotion Fail To Move, Then It Must Perish Unavoidably In Disgust Or Contempt.

The Discovery Of America Was The Occasion Of The Greatest Outburst Of Cruelty And Reckless Greed Known In History.

Ah! These Commercial Interests -- Spoiling The Finest Life Under The Sun. Why Must The Sea Be Used For Trade -- And For War As Well?...it Would Have Been So Much Nicer Just To Sail About, With Here And There A Port And A Bit Of Land To Stretch One's Legs On, Buy A Few Books And Get A Change Of Cooking For A While.

A Train Of Thought Is Never False. The Falsehood Lies Deep In The Necessities Of Existence.

Train Of Thought

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.

I Am A Great Foe Of Favoritism In Public Life, In Private Life, And Even In The Delicate Relationship Of An Author To His Works.

The Question Is Not How To Get Cured, But How To Live.

I -- I Alone Know How To Mourn For Him As He Deserves.' But While We Were Still Shaking Hands, Such A Look Of Awful Desolation Came Upon Her Face That I Perceived She Was One Of Those Creatures That Are Not The Playthings Of Time. For Her He Had Died Only Yesterday. And, By Jove! The Impression Was So Powerful That For Me, Too, He Seemed To Have Died Only Yesterday -- Nay, This Very Minute. I Saw Her And Him In The Same Instant Of Time -- His Death And Her Sorrow -- I Saw Her Sorrow In The Very Moment Of His Death. Do You Understand? I Saw Them Together -- I Heard Them Together.

Sleep After Toyle, Port After Stormie Seas, Ease After Warre, Death After Life, Does Greatly Please.

We Live In The Flicker -- May It Last As Long As The Old Earth Keeps Rolling! But Darkness Was Here Yesterday.

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.

Conrad Placed On The Title Page An Epigraph Taken From Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene: "sleep After Toyle, Port After Stormie Seas, Ease After Warre, Death After Life, Does Greatly Please" This Also Became Conrad's Epitaph.

I Saw Him Open His Mouth Wide. . . As Though He Had Wanted To Swallow All The Air, All The Earth, All The Men Before Him.

In Order To Move Others Deeply We Must Deliberately Allow Ourselves To Be Carried Away Beyond The Bounds Of Our Normal Sensibility.

A Certain Simplicity Of Thought Is Common To Serene Souls At Both Ends Of The Social Scale.

Fiction Is History, Human History, Or It Is Nothing.

Necessity, They Say, Is Mother Of Invention, But Fear, Too, Is Not Barren Of Ingenious Suggestions.

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.

The Terrorist And The Policeman Both Come From The Same Basket.

As In Political So In Literary Action A Man Wins Friends For Himself Mostly By The Passion Of His Prejudices And The Consistent Narrowness Of His Outlook.

Imagination, Not Invention, Is The Supreme Master Of Art As Of Life.

Of All The Inanimate Objects, Of All Men's Creations, Books Are The Nearest To Us For They Contain Our Very Thoughts, Our Ambitions, Our Indignations, Our Illusions, Our Fidelity To The Truth, And Our Persistent Leanings To Error. But Most Of All They Resemble Us In Their Precious Hold On Life.

Being A Lady Is A Frightfully Troublesome Assignment, Since It Comprises Mainly In Managing Men.

Words, As Is Well Known, Are The Great Foes Of Reality.

That's Why Love Is So Inseparable From Any Talk About Truth And Death, Because We Know That Love Is Fundamentally A Death Of An Old Self That Was Isolated And The Emergence Of A New Self Now Entangled With Another Self, The Self That You Fall In Love With.

Falling In Love

All A Man Can Betray Is His Conscience.

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.

It Would Take Too Long To Explain The Intimate Alliance Of Contradictions In Human Nature Which Makes Love Itself Wear At Times The Desperate Shape Of Betrayal. And Perhaps There Is No Possible Explanation.

There Is Something Haunting In The Light Of The Moon; It Has All The Dispassionateness Of A Disembodied Soul, And Something Of Its Inconceivable Mystery.

Resignation, Not Mystic, Not Detached, But Resignation Open-eyed, Conscious, And Informed By Love, Is The Only One Of Our Feelings For Which It Is Impossible To Become A Sham.

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.

The Ethical View Of The Universe Involves Us In So Many Cruel And Absurd Contradictions That I Have Come To Suspect That The Aim Of Creation Cannot Be Ethical At All.

Do Not Talk To Me Of Archimedes' Lever. He Was An Absent-minded Person With A Mathematical Imagination. Mathematics Commands My Respect, But I Have No Use For Engines. Give Me The Right Word And The Right Accent And I Will Move The World.

Everything Can Be Found At Sea According To The Spirit Of Your Quest.

And This Also," Said Marlow Suddenly, "has Been One Of The Dark Places Of The Earth.

It’s Extraordinary How We Go Through Life With Eyes Half Shut, With Dull Ears, With Dormant Thoughts. Perhaps It’s Just As Well; And It May Be That It Is This Very Dullness That Makes Life To The Incalculable Majority So Supportable And So Welcome.

Kisses Are The Remnants Of Paradise.

For A Moment I Had A View Of A World That Seemed To Wear A Vast And Dismal Aspect Of Disorder, While, In Truth, Thanks To Our Unwearied Efforts, It Is As Sunny An Arrangement Of Small Conveniences As The Mind Of Man Can Conceive.

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.

We Can Never Cease To Be Ourselves.

A Man Is A Worker. If He Is Not That He Is Nothing.

Words, As Is Well Known, Are The Great Foes Of Reality. I Have Been For Many Years A Teacher Of Languages. It Is An Occupation Which At Length Becomes Fatal To Whatever Share Of Imagination, Observation, And Insight An Ordinary Person May Be Heir To. 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.

It Is To Be Remarked That A Good Many People Are Born Curiously Unfitted For The Fate Waiting Them On This Earth.

We Are Snared Into Doing Things For Which We Get Called Names, And Things For Which We Get Hanged, And Yet The Spirit May Well Survive - Survive The Condemnations, Survive The Halter, By Jove! And There Are Things - They Look Small Enough Sometimes Too - By Which Some Of Us Are Totally And Completely Undone.

Everything Belonged To Him--but That Was A Trifle. The Thing To Know Was What He Belonged To, How Many Powers Of Darkness Claimed Him For Their Own.

Heart Of Darkness

He Has To Live In The Midst Of The Incomprehensible, Which Is Detestable. And It Has A Fascination, Too, Which Goes To Work Upon Him. The Fascination Of The Abomination--you Know.

The Sea Never Changes And Its Works, For All The Talks Of Men, Are Wrapped In Mystery.

You Can't, In Sound Morals, Condemn A Man For Taking Care Of His Own Integrity. It Is His Clear Duty.

In The Empty Immensity Of Earth, Sky, And Water, There She Was, Incomprehensible, Firing Into A Continent.

We Live As We Dream - Alone. While The Dream Disappears, The Life Continues Painfully.

There Is Something Haunting In The Light Of The Moon.

The Way Of Even The Most Jusitifiable Revolution Is Prepared By Personal Impulses Disguised Into Creeds.

Give Me The Right Word And The Right Accent And I Will Move The World.

Going Home Must Be Like Going To Render An Account.

I Take It That What All Men Are Really After Is Some Form Or Perhaps Only Some Formula Of Peace.

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William C. Bryant

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