Quotes from Victory

“Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put it's trust in life!”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“The use of reason is to justify the obscure desires that move our conduct, impulses, passions, prejudices and follies, and also our fears.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“The Zangiacomo band was not making music; it was simply murdering silence with a vulgar, ferocious energy.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“dreams are madness, my dear. It's things that happen in the waking world, while one is asleep, that one would be glad to know the meaning of.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“She was engaged in the task of defending her position in life," said Heyst. "It's a very respectable task.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“The world of finance is a mysterious world in which, incredible as the fact may appear, evaporation precedes liquidation. First the capital evaporates, and then the company goes into liquidation. These are very unnatural physics ...”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“It was the very essence of his life to be a solitary achievement, accomplished not by hermit-like withdrawal with it's silence and immobility but by a system of restless wandering, by the detachment of an impermanent dweller amongst changing scenes. In this scheme he had perceived the means of passing through life without suffering and almost without a single care in the world- invulnerable because elusive.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“You see we had on the whole liked him well enough. And liking is not sufficient to keep going the interest one takes in a human being. With hatred, apparently, it is otherwise.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“I believe in children praying--well, women, too, but I rather think God expects men to be more self-reliant. I don't hold with a man everlastingly bothering the Almighty with his silly troubles.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“He had entered by then the broad, human path of inconsistencies.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“But there is an unholy fascination in systematic noise. He did not flee from it incontinently, as one might have expected him to do. He remained, astonished at himself for remaining, since nothing could have been more repulsive to his tastes, more painful to his senses, and, so to speak, more contrary to his genius, than this rude exhibition of vigour. The Zangiacomo band was not making music; it was simply murdering silence with a vulgar, ferocious energy. One felt as if witnessing a deed of violence; and that impression was so strong that it seemed marvelous to see the people sitting so quietly on their chairs, drinking so calmly out of their glasses, and giving no signs of distress, anger, or fear. Heyst averted his gaze from the unnatural spectacle of their indifference.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“The islands are very quiet. One sees them lying about, clothed in their dark garments of leaves, in a great hush of silver and azure, where the sea without murmurs meets the sky in a ring of magic stillness.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“As is often the case with lawless natures, Ricardo’s faith in any given individual was of a simple, unquestioning character. For man must have some support in life.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“There is, as every schoolboy knows in this scientific age, a very close chemical relation between coal and diamonds. It is the reason, I believe, why some people allude to coal as "black diamonds." Both these commodities represent wealth; but coal is a much less portable form of property. There is, from that point of view, a deplorable lack of concentration in coal. Now, if a coal-mine could be put into one's waistcoat pocket—but it can't! At the same time, there is a fascination in coal, the supreme commodity of the age in which we are camped like bewildered travellers in a garish, unrestful hotel.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“The girl he had come across, of whom he had possessed himself, to whose presence he was not yet accustomed, with whom he did not yet know how to live; that human being so near and still so strange, gave him a greater sense of his own reality than he had ever known in all his life.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“And incompleteness of any sort leads to trouble.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“Occupation? Put down, well – tourists. We’ve been called harder names before now;”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“His mind, cool, alert, watched it sink there with a sort of vague concern at the absurdity of the occupation, till it rested at the bottom, deep down, where our unexpressed longings lie.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“The unchanging Man of history is wonderfully adaptable cloth by his power of endurance and in his capacity for detachment. The fact seems to be that the play of his destiny is too great for his fears and too mysterious for his understanding. Were the trump of the Last Judgement to sound suddenly on a working day the musician at his piano would go on with his performance of Beethoven's Sonata and the cobbler at his stall stick to his last in undisturbed confidence in the virtues of the leather. And with perfect propriety. For what are we to let ourselves be disturbed by an angel's vengeful music too mighty for our ears and too awful for our terrors ? Thus it happens to us to be struck suddenly by the lightning of wrath. The reader will go on reading if the book pleases him and the critic will go on criticizing with that faculty of detachment born perhaps from a sense of infinite littleness and wich is yet the only faculty that seems to assimilate man to the immortal gods.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“Formerly, in solitude and in silence, he had been used to think clearly and sometimes even profoundly, seeing life outside the flattering optical delusion of everlasting hope, of conventional self-deceptions, of an ever-expected happiness.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“I suppose I have done a certain amount of harm, since I allowed myself to be tempted into action. It seemed innocent enough, but all action is bound to be harmful. It is devilish. That is why this world is evil upon the whole. But I have done with it! I shall never lift a little finger again. At one time I thought that intelligent observation of facts was the best way of cheating the time which is allotted to us whether we want it or not; but now I, have done with observation, too.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“The islands are very quiet. One sees them lying about, clothed in their dark garments of leaves, in a great hush of silver and azure, where the sea without murmurs meets the sky in a ring of magic stillness. A sort of smiling somnolence broods over them; the very voices of their people are soft and subdued, as if afraid to break some protecting spell.
Perhaps this was the very spell which had enchanted Heyst in the early days.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“Nothing is more painful than the shock of sharp contradictions that lacerate our intelligence and our feelings.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“What captivated my fancy was that I, Axel Heyst, the most detached of creatures in this earthly captivity, the veriest tramp on this earth, an indifferent stroller going through the world's bustle—that I should have been there to step into the situation of an agent of Providence. I, a man of universal scorn and unbelief...”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“To slay, to love—the greatest enterprises of life upon a man! And I have no experience of either.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“And Heyst, the son, read:

Of the stratagems of life the most cruel is the consolation of love—the most subtle, too; for the desire is the bed of dreams.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“After the cold gust of wind there was an absolute stillness of the air. The thunder-charged mass hung unbroken beyond the low, ink-black headland, darkening the twilight. By contrast, the sky at the zenith displayed pellucid clearness, the sheen of a delicate glass bubble which the merest movement of air might shatter. A little to the left, between the black masses of the headland and of the forest, the volcano, a feather of smoke by day and a cigar-glow at night, took its first fiery expanding breath of the evening. Above it a reddish star came out like an expelled spark from the fiery bosom of the earth, enchanted into permanency by the mysterious spell of frozen spaces.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“And in this case his great practice in it was assisted by hate, which, like love, has an eloquence of its own.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“He was easily sorry for people.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

“A diplomatic statement ... is a statement of which everything is true but the sentiment which seems to prompt it.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory

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Popular quotes

“I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.”
― Gayle Forman, quote from If I Stay

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Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)”
― Gillian Flynn, quote from Gone Girl

“That which is around me does not affect my mood; my mood affects that which is around me.”
― Garth Stein, quote from The Art of Racing in the Rain

“Take a person’s memories, and you change who they are.”
― Veronica Roth, quote from Allegiant

“And swell not thy cheek (for pride) at men, nor walk in insolence through the earth; for Allah loveth not any arrogant boaster.”
― quote from The Qur'an / القرآن الكريم

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.