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"He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything?"
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"How we choose to perceive affects how we partake of reality, narrowly or completely."

"We often focus on what is wrong and complain that nothing is beautiful."

"The mind can fool the heart, as the heart can fool the mind."

"The feeling that the world is full of people who think different is synonymous with wrong."

"People see what they expect to see."

"The devil was always in the detail. And here the detail was certainly devilish."

"He who imagines he can do without the world deceives himself much, but he who fancies the world cannot do without him is still more mistaken."

"I saw the world in black and white instead of the vibrant colours and shades I knew existed."

"Life is an illusion which wisely prevents you from seeing yourself fully."

"When I deeply look at a pious, I see no affection but fear; and when I look at an atheist, I see no fear but conceit!"
Explore more quotes by Joseph Conrad

"Over the lives borne from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness."

"And yet I have known the sea too long to believe in its respect for decency. An elemental force is ruthlessly frank."

"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."

"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 fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core."

"I saw only the reality of his destiny, which he had knownhow to follow with unfaltering footsteps, that life begun in humblesurroundings, rich in generous enthusiasms, in friendship, love, war--inall the exalted elements of romance."

"In a dispassionate view the ardour for reform, improvement for virtue, for knowledge, and even beauty is only a vein sticking up for appearances as though one were anxious about the cut of ones clothes in a community of blind men."

"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:The horror! The horror!"

"Well, you know, that was the worst of it - this suspicion of not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity - like yours - the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar."
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