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Heart of Darkness quotes

Joseph Conrad

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“We live, as we dream—alone...” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“Droll thing life is—that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—that comes too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“I don't like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work—the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself, not for others—what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really...” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“The mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain—why he did not instantly...” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“I think the knowledge came to him at last—only at the very last.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life....” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“It seems to me I am trying to tell you ya 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...” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“It was not my strength that wanted nursing, it was my imagination that wanted soothing.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“If the absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit of adventure had ever ruled a human being, it ruled this bepatched youth. I almost envied him the possession of this modest and clear flame.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“They were common everyday words—the familiar, vague sounds exchanged on every waking day of life. But what of that? They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first...” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“Kurtz—it was ordered I should never betray him—it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“He hated all this, and somehow he couldn't get away.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember because we were travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign—and no memories.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“But when one is young one must see things, gather experience, ideas; enlarge the mind.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“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.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there—there you could look at a thing monstrous and free.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“Very well; I hear; I admit, but I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“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.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“Kurtz—Kurtz—that means short in German—don't it? Well, the name was as true as everything else in his life—and death.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence—but more generally takes the form of apathy...” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“Of course, a fool, what with sheer fright and fine sentiments, is always safe.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times in a sudden recrudescence of glare.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

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loneliness life mind fear nightmare reality dream self-knowledge understanding strength imagination youth meaning futility regret belief death freedom madness knowledge

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Joseph Conrad quotes