I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamou...
And yet I have known the sea too long to believe in its respect for decency. An elemental force is ruthlessly frank
In our own hearts we trust for our salvation, in the men that surround us, in the sights that fill our eyes, in the sounds that fill our ears, and in the air that fill our lungs.
As i emerge on deck the ordered arrangement of the stars meets my eye, unclouded, infinitely wearisome. There they are: stars, sun, sea, light, darkness, space, great waters; the formidable Work of th...
Law is) the pretty branding instrument invented by the overfed to protect themselves against the hungry ?
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
It may be that it is this very dulness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and welcome. Nevertheless, there can be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments o...
Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very last. But the wilderness found him out early, and had taken vengeance for the fantas...
The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him th...
One can't live with one's finger everlastingly on one's pulse.
I don't like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work,—the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself, not for others—what no other man can ever know.
I can't afford to despise anything. An absurdity may be the starting-point of the most dangerous complications.
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.
Everything belonged to him—but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.
A writing may be lost; a lie may be written; but what the eye has seen is truth and remains in the mind!
. . but in the great demoralization of the land he kept up his appearance. That's backbone.
As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices.
We live as we dream - alone. While the dream disappears, the life continues painfully.
Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.
To cut oneself entirely from one's kind is impossible. To live in a desert one must be a saint.