Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conradwas a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. He joined the British merchant marine in 1878, and was granted British nationality in 1886. Though he did not speak English fluently until he was in his twenties, he was a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. He wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst...
NationalityPolish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth3 December 1857
CountryPoland
He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it!
He remembered that she was pretty, and, more, that she had a special grace in the intimacy of life. She had the secret of individuality which excites--and escapes.
This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak.
All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward upon the miseries and credulities of mankind
For every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early, and the human race come to an end
A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.
Don't talk to me of your Archimedes' lever. He was an absentminded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.
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.
Between the conception and the creationbetween the emotion and the responseFalls the shadow
A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.
Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.
In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility.
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.
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.