Joseph Conrad - Nostromo (on the death of Decoud)

But the truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy known but to few on this Earth, and whom only the simplest of us are fit to withstand. The brilliant Costaguanaro of the boulevards had died from solitude and want of faith in himself and others.
Joseph Conrad
The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history.
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
The conquest of the earth... is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only... not a sentimental pretence but an idea.
Joseph Conrad
What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it.
Joseph Conrad
Being a woman is a terribly difficult task since it consists principally in dealing with men.
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
We live as we dream - alone.
Joseph Conrad
All a man can betray is his conscience.
Joseph Conrad
For the great mass of mankind, the only saving grace needed is a steady fidelity to what is nearest to hand and heart for the short moment of each human effort.
Joseph Conrad
The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history.
Joseph Conrad
I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.
Joseph Conrad
They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything.
Joseph Conrad
Having had to encounter single-handed during his period of eclipse many physical dangers, he was well aware of the most dangerous element common to them all: of the crushing, paralysing sense of human littleness, which is what really defeats a human struggling with natural forces, alone, far from the eyes of his fellows.
Joseph Conrad
We live, as we dream, alone
Joseph Conrad
All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
Strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.
Joseph Conrad - Nostromo
There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind.
Joseph Conrad - Lord Jim
Who could tell what forms, what visions, what faces, what forgiveness he could see in the glow of the west!

- Joseph Conrad - Nostromo (on the death of Decoud)