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.

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a specter through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?

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

It is a maudlin and indecent verity that comes out through the strength of wine.

Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin.

They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience.

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

As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and the consistent narrowness of his outlook.

Don't you forget what's divine in the Russian soul and that's resignation.

Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham.

A man's real life is that accorded to him in the thoughts of other men by reason of respect or natural love.