Joseph Conrad Life Quotations

There are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some fable of strife to be forgotten - before the end is told - even if there happens to be any end to it.

A train of thought is never false. The falsehood lies deep in the necessities of existence.

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

I am a great foe of favoritism in public life, in private life, and even in the delicate relationship of an author to his works.

A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea.

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.

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.

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.

Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear.

Like a flash of lightning between the clouds, we live in the flicker.

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

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.

The last thing a woman will consent to in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.

It’s extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it’s just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome.

Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off.

For every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early, and the human race come to an end

I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more --the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort --to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires --and expires, too soon, too soon --before life itself.