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.
JOSEPH CONRAD, Some Reminiscences
Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy.
JOSEPH CONRAD, Heart of Darkness
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. Now and then a fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant only. No human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude without going mad.
JOSEPH CONRAD, Under Western Eyes
Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.
Never test another man by your own weakness.
JOSEPH CONRAD, Lord Jim
The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.
JOSEPH CONRAD, Lord Jim
I don't like work -- no man does -- but I like what is in work -- the chance to find yourself.
JOSEPH CONRAD, The Heart of Darkness
We live as we dream--alone.
JOSEPH CONRAD, Heart of Darkness
