The atmosphere of officialdom would kill anything that breathes the air of human endeavour, would extinguish hope and fear alike in the supremacy of paper and ink.
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.
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
The mind of man is capable of anything.
It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.
Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart...
And this also, said Marlow suddenly, has been one of the dark places of the earth.
A man may destroy everything within himself, love and hate and belief, and even doubt; but as long as he clings to life he cannot destroy fear: the fear, subtle, indestructible, and terrible, that per...
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?
Caricature: putting the face of a joke upon the body of a truth.
But when one is young one must see things, gather experience, ideas; enlarge the mind.
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.
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.
Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her...
It was unearthly, and the men were--No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it--this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled, and leaped...
Felicity, felicity - how shall I say it? - is quaffed out of a golden cup in every latitude: the flavour is with you - with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you please.
To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.
To be busy with material affairs is the best preservative against reflection fears doubts ... all these things which stand in the way of achievement. I suppose a fellow proposing to cut his throat w...
Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.
Even extreme grief may ultimately ventitself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy