I. Frost's Selected Quotations

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Joseph Conrad

The horror! The horror!
Joseph Conrad

I don't like work... but I like what is in work - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality - for yourself, not for others - which no other man can ever know.
Joseph Conrad

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.
Joseph Conrad

A word carries far - very far - deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space
Joseph Conrad

Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.
Joseph Conrad

We live, as we dream - alone
Joseph Conrad

An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation
Joseph Conrad

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires
Joseph Conrad

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.
Joseph Conrad

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.
Joseph Conrad

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.
Joseph Conrad

The way of even the most justifiable revolutions is prepared by personal impulses disguised into creeds
Joseph Conrad

A man's most open actions have a secret side to them
Joseph Conrad

Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it.
Joseph Conrad

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.
Joseph Conrad

By a benevolent provision of Nature, no man is a hero to his valet, or else the heroes would have to brush their own clothes
Joseph Conrad

All a man can betray is his conscience
Joseph Conrad

Curiosity being one of the forms of self-revelation, a systematically incurious person remains always partly mysterious
Joseph Conrad

It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog.
Joseph Conrad

You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends
Joseph Conrad

Being myself animated by feelings of affection toward my fellowmen, I am saddened by the modern system of advertising. Whatever evidence it offers of enterprise, ingenuity, impudence, and resource in certain individuals, it proves to my mind the wide prevalence of that form of mental degradation which is called gullibility.
Joseph Conrad

A man must identify himself with something more tangible than his own personality, and establish his pride somewhere, either in his social position, or in the quality of the work he is obliged to do, or simply in the superiority of the idleness he may be fortunate enough to enjoy
Joseph Conrad

I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make despair pause. For in truth we who are creatures of impulse are creatures of despair.
Joseph Conrad

It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth.
Joseph Conrad

Every age is fed on illusions, lest man should renounce life early and the human race come to an end
Joseph Conrad

As to honor - you know - it's a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn't theirs.
Joseph Conrad

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.
Joseph Conrad

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
Joseph Conrad

You can't, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty.
Joseph Conrad

God is for men and religion is for women
Joseph Conrad

I had ambition not only to go farther than any man had ever been before, but as far as it was possible for a man to go.
Joseph Conrad

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

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.
Joseph Conrad

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.
Joseph Conrad

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
Joseph Conrad

Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love -- and to put its trust in life.
Joseph Conrad

For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed for it, for all the celebrations it has been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.
Joseph Conrad

A man is a worker. If he is not that he is nothing
Joseph Conrad

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 too much.
Joseph Conrad

I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat.
Joseph Conrad