Джозеф Конрад цитаты

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„Автор пишет только половину книги: другую половину пишет читатель.“

„Вера в сверхъестественный источник зла не нужна, люди сами вполне способны на любое зло.“

„Судить о человеке надо как по его друзьям, так и по его врагам.“

„Бог — для мужчин, а религия — для женщин.“

„Душа человека способна на всё, ибо в ней содержится всё — всё прошлое и всё грядущее.“

„Вещи могут рассказать о людях значительно больше, чем люди о вещах.“

„Самый ужасный страх люди испытывают перед своим воображением.“

„Сознание людей способно на все, потому что в нем сосредоточено все: и прошлое и будущее.“

„Мне хотелось воздать должное морю, его кораблям и его людям, без которых я не стал бы тем, чем стал. Возродить их к жизни иным путем я не сумел бы, о любом же другом "способе подачи материала" не могло быть и речи.“

„Быть женщиной очень трудно уже потому, что в основном приходится иметь дело с мужчинами.“

„Террорист и полицейский сделаны из одного теста.“

„Сплетни – это то, что никому в открытую не нравится, но чем все наслаждаются.“

„Каждая нация известна в мире главным образом своими пороками.“

„Решенная загадка становится банальностью.“

„Забыть о себе, посвятить всего себя служению своему великому искусству – вот единственный путь для моряка.“

„Хороший вкус лучше плохого, но и плохой лучше, чем отсутствие всякого.“

„Море никогда не меняется и его дела, несмотря на людскую болтовню, окутаны тайной.“

„Для меня море – не просто «водный путь», а близкий друг и товарищ.“

“The mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage--who can tell?--but
truth--truth stripped of its cloak of time.”

“I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go”

“His face was like the autumn sky, overcast one moment and bright the next.”

“The Westerly Wind asserting his sway from the south-west quarter is often like a monarch gone mad, driving forth with wild imprecations the most faithful of his courtiers to shipwreck, disaster, and death.”

“What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it.”

“Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love — and to put its trust in life!!”

“Nobody ever comes back from a "missing" ship to tell how hard was the death of the craft, and how sudden and overwhelming the last anguish of her men. Nobody can say with what thoughts, with what regrets, with what words on their lips they died. But there is something fine in the sudden passing away of these hearts from the extremity of struggle and stress and tremendous uproar—from the vast, unrestful rage of the surface to the profound peace of the depths, sleeping untroubled since the beginning of ages.”

“I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.”

“In plucking the fruit of memory one runs the risk of spoiling its bloom.”

“The future is of our own making — and (for me) the most striking characteristic of the century is just that development, that maturing of our consciousness which should open our eyes to that truth.”

“His name was Jermyn, and he dodged all day long about the galley drying his handkerchief before the stove. Apparently he never slept. He was a dismal man, with a perpetual tear sparkling at the end of his nose, who either had been in trouble, or was in trouble, or expected to be in trouble — couldn't be happy unless something went wrong. He mistrusted my youth, my common-sense, and my seamanship, and made a point of showing it in a hundred little ways. I dare say he was right. It seems to me I knew very little then, and I know not much more now; but I cherish a hate for that Jermyn to this day.”

“Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may be reached naturally in the struggle for bread. But there is something beyond — a higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art — which is art.”

“It is not the clear-sighted who lead the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm mental fog.”

“The sea never changes and its works, for all the talk of men, are wrapped in mystery.”

“The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of Westerly weather, is an impassive-faced tyrant with a sharp poniard held behind his back for a treacherous stab.”

“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, paralyzing sense of human littleness, which is what really defeats a man struggling with natural forces, alone, far from the eyes of his fellows.”

“Let a fool be made serviceable according to his folly.”

“He feared neither God, nor devil, nor man, nor wind, nor sea, nor his own conscience. And I believe he hated everybody and everything. But I think he was afraid to die. I believe I am the only man who ever stood up to him.”

“A nickname may be the best record of a success. That's what I call putting the face of a joke upon the body of a truth.”

“The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement — but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims.”

“"God for men — religions for women," he muttered sometimes.”

“Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.”

“An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.”

“One must have lived on such diet to discover what ghastly trouble the necessity of swallowing one's food become.”

“She strode like a grenadier, was strong and upright like an obelisk, had a beautiful face, a candid brow, pure eyes, and not a thought of her own in her head.”

“He remembered that she was pretty, and, more, that she had a special grace in the intimacy of life. She had the secret of individuality which excites — and escapes.”

“This stretch of the Thames from London Bridge to the Albert Docks is to other watersides of river ports what a virgin forest would be to a garden. It is a thing grown up, not made. It recalls a jungle by the confused, varied, and impenetrable aspect of the buildings that line the shore, not according to a planned purpose, but as if sprung up by accident from scattered seeds. Like the matted growth of bushes and creepers veiling the silent depths of an unexplored wilderness, they hide the depths of London’s infinitely varied, vigorous, seething life. In other river ports it is not so. They lie open to their stream, with quays like broad clearings, with streets like avenues cut through thick timber for the convenience of trade… But London, the oldest and greatest of river ports, does not possess as much as a hundred yards of open quays upon its river front. Dark and impenetrable at night, like the face of a forest, is the London waterside. It is the waterside of watersides, where only one aspect of the world’s life can be seen, and only one kind of men toils on the edge of the stream. The lightless walls seem to spring from the very mud upon which the stranded barges lie; and the narrow lanes coming down to the foreshore resemble the paths of smashed bushes and crumbled earth where big game comes to drink on the banks of tropical streams.Behind the growth of the London waterside the docks of London spread out unsuspected, smooth, and placid, lost amongst the buildings like dark lagoons hidden in a thick forest. They lie concealed in the intricate growth of houses with a few stalks of mastheads here and there overtopping the roof of some four-story warehouse.”

“For the great mass of mankind the only saving grace that is needed is steady fidelity to what is nearest to hand and heart in the short moment of each human effort.”

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