Droll thing life is — that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself — that comes too late — a crop of inextinguishable regrets.
Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.
My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel–it is, before all, to make you see.
Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.
The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.
All idealisation makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity — it is to destroy it.
And yet is not mankind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive devotion. And what is the pursuit of truth, after all?
In a dispassionate view the ardour for reform, improvement for virtue, for knowledge, and even beauty is only a vein sticking up for appearances as though one were anxious about the cut of ones clothes in a community of blind men.
One must not make too much of anything in life, good or bad.
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?
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.
Are not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention?
Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall.
It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.
I don’t think a single one of them had any clear idea of time, as we at the end of countless ages have. They still belonged to the beginnings of time—
I remembered the old doctor, – “It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot.” I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting.
Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions.
Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.
Some great men owe most of their greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for their tools the exact quality of strength that matters for their work.
What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it.
Thus ended the first and adventurous part of his existence. What followed was so different that, but for the reality of sorrow which remained with him, this strange part must have resembled a dream.
This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompaniment to my meditations.
Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end.
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, valor, rage–who can tell?–buttruth–truth stripped of its cloak of time.
But when one is young one must see things, gather experience, ideas; enlarge the mind.
The mind of man is capable of anything – because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future.
They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force–nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.
It is a fact that the bitterest contradictions and the deadliest conflicts of the world are carried on in every individual breast capable of feeling and passion. [An anarchist]
The man up there raged aloud in two languages, and with a sincerity in his fury that almost convinced me I had, in some way, sinned against the harmony of the universe
I let him run on, this papier-maché Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.
He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a featherhat, walking on his hind legs.
There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies – which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world – what I want to forget.
Over the lives borne from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness.
It was not my strength that wanted nursing, it was my imagination that wanted soothing.
I saw only the reality of his destiny, which he had knownhow to follow with unfaltering footsteps, that life begun in humblesurroundings, rich in generous enthusiasms, in friendship, love, war–inall the exalted elements of romance.
All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell, since I am trying to interpret for you into slow speech the instantaneous effect of visual impressions.
…his words – the gift of expression, the bewildering, the iluminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness.
Even extreme grief may ultimately ventitself in violence–but more generally takes the form of apathy
There werethings, he said mournfully, that perhaps could never be told, only hehad lived so much alone that sometimes he forgot–he forgot. The lighthad destroyed the assurance which had inspired him in the distantshadows.
No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence–that which makes its truth, its meaning–its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream–alone.
She had said he had been driven away from her by a dream…
In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent.
I wondered how far I should turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one’s own personality every man sets up for himself secretly.
This man suffered too much. He hated all this, and somehow he couldn’t get away. When I had a chance I begged him to try and leave while there was time; I offered to go back with him. And he would say yes, and then he would remain…
Let them think what they liked, but I didn’t mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank — but that’s not the same thing.
And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.
His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines.
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.
It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.
He struggled with himself, too. I saw it — I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.
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.
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?
I would just as soon have abused the old village church at home for not being a cathedral.
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….
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.
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.
As a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement.
A certain simplicity of thought is common to serene souls at both ends of the social scale.
And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets.
Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire.
The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.
Principles? Principles won’t do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags—rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief.
The sun was fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip with steam.
The sky over Patusan was blood-red, immense, streaming like an open vein. An enormous sun nestled crimson amongst the treetops, and the forest below had a black and forbidding face.
[The wilderness] had caressed him, and—lo!—he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation.
The sea, perhaps because of its saltiness, roughens the outside but keeps sweet the kernel of its servants’ soul.
And yet I have known the sea too long to believe in its respect for decency. An elemental force is ruthlessly frank
Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.
History repeats itself but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.
History repeats itself but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.
The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves or on whom she simply depends is want of courage.
Facing it-always facing it-that’s the way to get through. Face it!
The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves or on whom she simply depends is want of courage.
How does one kill fear I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart slash off its spectral head take it by the spectral throat?
Who would care to question the ground of forgiveness or compassion?
You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices.
Happiness happiness … the flavor is with you-with you alone and you can make it as intoxicating as you please.
It is when we try to grapple with another man’s intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible wavering and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun.
Caricature: putting the face of a joke upon the body of a truth.
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.
Who knows what true loneliness is – not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.
I take it that what all men are really after is some form of perhaps only some formula of peace.
There is something haunting in the light of the moon it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul and something of its inconceivable mystery.
To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.
How does one kill fear? … How do you shoot a specter through the heart slash off its spectral head take it by its spectral throat?
No man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.
Felicity felicity … is quaffed out of a golden cup … the flavour is with you alone and you can make it as intoxicating as you please.
To be busy with material affairs is the best preservative against reflection fears doubts…. I suppose a fellow proposing to cut his throat would experience a sort of relief while occupied in stropping his razor carefully.
The mind of man is capable of anything – because everything is in it all the past as well as all the future.
The sea – the truth must be confessed – has no generosity. No display of manly qualities – courage hardihood endurance faithfulness – has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.
I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more – the feeling that I could last forever outlast the sea the earth and all men.
Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.
this grimy fragment of another world, the forerunner of change, of conquest, of trade, of massacres, of blessings….the merry dance of death and trade goes on
Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love – and to put its trust in life.
A word carries far, very far, deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space.
This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it but man will never on his heap of mud keep still.
Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life.
It is a maudlin and indecent verity that comes out through the strength of wine.
Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.
As to honor – you know – it’s a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn’t theirs.
History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.
The sea – this truth must be confessed – has no generosity. No display of manly qualities – courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness – has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.
How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a specter through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?
Only in men’s imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.
Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praiseworthy sincerity which, while it delivers one into the hands of one’s enemies, is as likely as not to embroil one with one’s friends.
The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.
It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog.
He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.
Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
Going home must be like going to render an account.
Who knows what true loneliness is – not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.
All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.