Joseph Conrad

Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.

I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make despair pause. For in truth we who are creatures of impulse are not creatures of despair.

It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate awaiting them on this earth.

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

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 …

The future is of our own making — and (for me) the most striking characteristic of the century is just that development, that maturing of our consciousness which should open our eyes to that truth.

Facing it — always facing it — that's the way to get through.

The sea never changes and its works, for all the talk of men, are wrapped in mystery.

Running all over the sea trying to get behind the weather.

One must have lived on such diet to discover what ghastly trouble the necessity of swallowing one's food become.

She strode like a grenadier, was strong and upright like an obelisk, had a beautiful face, a candid brow, pure eyes, and not a thought of her own in her head.

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 …

The more I write the less substance do I see in my work, … It is tolerably awful. And I face it, I face it but the fright is growing on me. My fortitude is shaken by the view of the monster. It does not move; its eyes are baleful; it is as …

What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it.

It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.

When he stepped off the straight and narrow path of his peculiar honesty, it was with an inward assertion of unflinching resolve to fall back again into the monotonous but safe stride of virtue as soon as his little excursion into the …

Above all, we must forgive the unhappy souls who have elected to make the pilgrimage on foot, who skirt the shore and look uncomprehendingly upon the horror of the struggle, the joy of victory, the profound hopelessness of the vanquished.

Socialism must inevitably end in Caesarism. ... Disestablishment, Land Reform, Universival Brotherhood are but like milestones on the road to ruin.