Joseph Conrad

But sometimes, by the deserving and the fortunate, even that task is accomplished. And when it is accomplished_ behold!_ all the truth of life is there: a moment of vision, a sigh, a smile_ and the return to an eternal rest.

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.

I am stupid, am I not? What more can I want? If you ask them who is brave--who is true--who is just--who is it they would trust with their lives?--they would say, Tuan Jim. And yet they can never know the real, real truth....

Yes! Very funny this terrible thing is. 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 endeavour to do, he drowns--nicht wahr?. . . No! I tell you! The way is to the destructive element submit yourself, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up. So if you ask me--how to be?

It doesnot matter; there__ many a heavenly body in the lot crowding upon us ofa night that mankind had never heard of, it being outside the sphereof its activities and of no earthly importance to anybody but to theastronomers who are paid to talk learnedly about its composition,weight, path--the irregularities of its conduct, the aberrations of itslight--a sort of scientific scandal-mongering.

The conquest of the earth is not a pretty thing.

I had turned away from the picture and was going back to the world where events move, men change, light flickers, life flows in a clear stream, no matter whether over mud or over stones.

I would just as soon have abused the old village church at home for not being a cathedral.

How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?

He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything?

O youth! The strenght of it, the faith of it, the imagination of it! (...) I think of her with pleasure, with affection, with regret - as you would think of some one dead you have loved. I shall never forget her.... Pass the bottle.

You fight, work, sweat, nearly kill yourself, sometimes do kill yourself, trying to accomplish something _ and you can__. Not from any fault of yours. You simply can do nothing, neither great nor little _ not a thing in the world _ not even marry an old maid, or get a wretched 600-ton cargo of coal to its port of destination.

O youth! The strength of it, the faith of it, the imagination of it! To me she was not an old rattle-trap carting about the world a lot of coal for a freight--to me she was the endeavour, the test, the trial of life. I think of her with pleasure, with affection, with regret--as you would think of someone dead you have loved. I shall never forget her. . . . Pass the bottle.

There too he had been treated with revolting injustice. His struggles, his privations,his hard work to raise himself in the social scale, hadfilled him with such an exalted conviction of his merits that it was extremely difficult for the world to treat him with justice_ the standard of that notion depending so much upon the patience of the individual. The Professor had genius, but lacked the great social virtue of resignation.

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__ clothes in a community of blind men.

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, valour, rage-who can tell?-but truth-truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder-the man know, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet the truth with his own true stuff-with his own inborn strength.

No man engaged in a work he does not like can preserve many saving illusionsabout himself. The distaste, the absence of glamour, extend from the occupation to the personality. It is only when ourappointed activities seem by a lucky accident to obey the particular earnestness of our temperament that we can taste the comfort of complete self-deception.

This, let me remind you again, is a love story; you can see it by the imbecility, not a repulsive imbecility, the exalted imbecility of these proceedings, this station in torchlight, as if they had come there on purpose to have it out for the edification of concealed murderers.