Quotes from Under Western Eyes

“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“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.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“The man who says that he has no illusions has at least that one.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“The belief in a super natural sources of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“Everything is inconceivable. The whole world is inconceivable to the strict logic of ideas. And yet the world exists to our senses, and we exist in it. There must be a necessity superior to our conceptions.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“I am quite willing to be the blind instrument of higher ends. To give one's life for the cause is nothing. But to have one's illusions destroyed - that is really almost more than one can bear.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“I can't afford to despise anything. An absurdity may be the starting-point of the most dangerous complications.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“To cut oneself entirely from one's kind is impossible. To live in a desert one must be a saint.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“In life, you see, there is not much choice. You have either to rot or to burn. And there is not one of us, painted or unpainted, that would not rather burn than rot.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“That propensity of lifting every problem from the plane of the understandable by means of some sort of mystic expression, is very Russian. I knew her well enough to have discovered her scorn for all the practical forms of political liberty known to the western world. I suppose one must be a Russian to understand Russian simplicity, a terrible corroding simplicity in which mystic phrases clothe a naive and hopeless cynicism. I think sometimes that the psychological secret of the profound difference of that people consists in this, that they detest life, the irremediable life of the earth as it is, whereas we westerners cherish it with perhaps an equal exaggeration of its sentimental value. But this is a digression indeed....”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“I don't know the world, nor yet the people in it; I have been too solitary - I am too young to trust my own opinions.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“It's a long time since God has done anything for the people.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“Yes, the sound of water, the voice of the wind - completely foreign to human passions. All the other sounds of this earth brought contamination to the solitude of a soul.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“The field of influence was great and infinitely varied - once one had conquered a name.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“There must be a wonderful soothing power in mere words since so many men have used them for self-communion. Being”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“For the dead can live only with the exact intensity and quality of the life imparted to them by the living.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“outside, the clear-cut strokes of the town clock counting”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“You are a son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin--I don't know what--to no end of people. I am just a man. Here I stand before you. A man with a mind. Did it ever occur to you how a man who had never heard a word of warm affection or praise in his life would think on matters on which you would think first with or against your class, your domestic tradition--your fireside prejudices?... Did you ever consider how a man like that would feel? I have no domestic tradition. I have nothing to think against. My tradition is historical. What have I to look back to but that national past from which you gentlemen want to wrench away your future? Am I to let my intelligence, my aspirations towards a better lot, be robbed of the only thing it has to go upon at the will of violent enthusiasts? You come from your province, but all this land is mine--or I have nothing. No doubt you shall be looked upon as a martyr some day--a sort of hero--a political saint. But I beg to be excused. I am content in fitting myself to be a worker. And what can you people do by scattering a few drops of blood on the snow? On this Immensity. On this unhappy Immensity! I tell you...[what] it needs is not a lot of haunting phantoms that I could walk through--but a man!”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“He cast his eyes upwards and stood amazed. The snow had ceased to fall, and now, as if by a miracle, he saw above his head the clear black sky of the northern winter, decorated with the sumptuous fires of the stars. It was a canopy fit for the resplendent purity of the snows.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“In Russia, the land of spectral ideas and disembodied aspirations, many brave minds have turned away at last from the vain and endless conflict to the one great historical fact of the land. They turned to autocracy for the peace of their patriotic conscience as a weary unbeliever, touched by grace, turns to the faith of his fathers for the blessing of spiritual rest. Like other Russians before him, Razumov, in conflict with himself, felt the touch of grace upon his forehead.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“The last thing I want to tell you is this: in a real revolution—not a simple dynastic change or a mere reform of institutions—in a real revolution the best characters do not come to the front. A violent revolution falls into the hands of narrow-minded fanatics and of tyrannical hypocrites at first. Afterwards comes the turn of all the pretentious intellectual failures of the time. Such are the chiefs and the leaders. You will notice that I have left out the mere rogues. The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement—but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims: the victims of disgust, of disenchantment—often of remorse. Hopes grotesquely betrayed, ideals caricatured—that is the definition of revolutionary success. There have been in every revolution hearts broken by such successes. But enough of that. My meaning is that I don’t want you to be a victim.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. I”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“The true Razumov had his being in the willed, in the determined future—in that future menaced by the lawlessness of autocracy—for autocracy knows no law—and the lawlessness of revolution.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“Originea sa cea mai directă se afla în declarația că era un rus. Orice aștepta el de la viață urma să i se dea, ori să i se refuze, doar prin această filiație. Imensa familie suferea acum din cauza disensiunilor interne, iar el se sustrăgea mental din diferend, așa cum orice om de bun-simț s-ar abține de la a lua partea cuiva într-o violentă ceartă de familie.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“Adevărata viață a unui om este aceea care i se acordă în mintea altora pe baza respectului sau a dragostei firești.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“Sentimentul continuității vieții se bazează pe neînsemnate impresii corporale. Banalitățile vieții cotidiene constituie o armură pentru suflet.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“Se gândi doar că viața fără fericire era imposibilă. Ce era fericirea?... A privi înainte era fericirea – atâta tot, nimic mai mult. A privi înainte sperând la împlinirea unei dorințe, răsplata unei anume pasiuni, iubiri, ambiții, uri – fără îndoială și a urii. Dragoste și ură. Și să scapi în fața primejdiilor existenței, să trăiești fără teamă, constituia și asta fericirea. Nimic altceva. Absența fricii, privirea spre viitor.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

“Era o femeie zveltă, într-o rochie neagră din mătase. O frunte înaltă, trăsături regulate și buzele delicat conturate stăteau mărturie frumuseții ei trecute. Ședea dreaptă într-un jilț... Mâinile subțiri îi zăceau în poală, imobilitatea ei facială avea ceva monahal.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Under Western Eyes

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“There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and whilst the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly placed themselves in the front rank among the nations, and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time.

All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and they have only to maintain their power; but these are still in the act of growth. All the others have stopped, or continue to advance with extreme difficulty; these alone are proceeding with ease and celerity along a path to which no limit can be perceived. The American struggles against the obstacles which nature opposes to him; the adversaries of the Russian are men. The former combats the wilderness and savage life; the latter, civilization with all its arms. The conquests of the American are therefore gained with the ploughshare; those of the Russian by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of the people; the Russian centres all the authority of society in a single arm. The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.”
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