Joseph Conrad · 176 pages
Rating: (15.5K votes)
“The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it much.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer
“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.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer
“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.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer
“He was little more than a voice. And I heard-him-it-this voice-other voices-all of them were so little more than voices-and the memory of that time itself lingers around me, impalpable, like a dying vibration of one immense jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean, without any kind of sense.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer
“And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory-like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer
“And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over and inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer
“If you are a girl, and you’ve had a significant relationship with someone, chances are you’ve saved all the pictures/letters/supercute little notes from that relationship in a box that is somewhere in your room or apartment or mansion.”
― quote from White Girl Problems
“As the universe comprises the totality of nature, containing everything that is natural, its creator must necessarily be outside nature. As the creator used no natural laws or forces to create the universe, the creator is clearly supernatural. As space and time are within the universe, the creator is also outside space and time, which is to say, eternal. As the universe is material, the creator is immaterial, which is to say, spiritual. As the universe was created from nothing, the creator is incomprehensibly powerful or, as best as we can tell, omnipotent.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, quote from What's So Great About Christianity
“When we returned from our jog, several Pirahãs were huddled in a corner of our house, and there was a strong smell of alcohol in the air. Those in the huddle looked conspiratorial and stared at us. Some seemed angry, others ashamed. Others just stared down at something on the ground that they were all surrounding. As I approached, they parted. Pokó’s baby was on the ground, dead. They had forced cachaça down its throat and killed it. “What happened to the baby?” I asked, almost in tears. “It died. It was in pain. It wanted to die,” they replied. I just picked up the baby and held it, with tears now beginning to stream down my cheeks. “Why would they kill a baby?” I asked myself in confusion and grief.”
― Daniel L. Everett, quote from Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle
“For the modern consciousness, the artist (replacing the saint) is the exemplary sufferer.”
― Susan Sontag, quote from Against Interpretation and Other Essays
“We name mostly in order to control but what is worth loving does not want to be held within the bounds of too narrow a calling. In many ways love has already named us before we can even begin to speak back to it, before we can utter the right words or understand what has happened to us or is continuing to happen to us: an invitation to the most difficult art of all, to love without naming at all.”
― David Whyte, quote from Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
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