"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."

"It doesnot matter; there's many a heavenly body in the lot crowding upon us ofa night that mankind had never heard of, it being outside the sphereof its activities and of no earthly importance to anybody but to theastronomers who are paid to talk learnedly about its composition,weight, path--the irregularities of its conduct, the aberrations of itslight--a sort of scientific scandal-mongering."

"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."

"There is a weird power in a spoken word."

"It was not my strength that wanted nursing, it was my imagination that wanted soothing."

"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."

"This is glorious!' I cried, and then i looked at the sinner by my side. He sat with his head sunk on his breast and said 'Yes', without raising his eyes, as if afraid to see writ large on the clear sky of the offing the reproach of his romantic conscience."

"My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see."

"Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it."

"A modern fleet of ships does not so much make use of the sea as exploit a highway."

"This man suffered too much. He hated all this, and somehow he couldn't get away. When I had a chance I begged him to try and leave while there was time; I offered to go back with him. And he would say yes, and then he would remain..."

"Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets."

"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."

"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."

"A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavor to do, he drowns."

"Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire."

"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."

"The sea - this truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness - has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power."

"Some great men owe most of their greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for their tools the exact quality of strength that matters for their work."

"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."

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

"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."

"I -- I alone know how to mourn for him as he deserves.' But while we were still shaking hands, such a look of awful desolation came upon her face that I perceived she was one of those creatures that are not the playthings of Time. For her he had died only yesterday. And, by Jove! the impression was so powerful that for me, too, he seemed to have died only yesterday -- nay, this very minute. I saw her and him in the same instant of time -- his death and her sorrow -- I saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death. Do you understand? I saw them together -- I heard them together."

"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."

"To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence."

"The mysteries of a universe made of drops of fire and clods of mud do not concern us in the least. The fate of humanity condemned ultimately to perish from cold is not worth troubling about. If you take it to heart it becomes an unendurable tragedy. If you believe in improvement you must weep, for the attained perfection must end in cold, darkness and silence. In a dispassionate view the ardour for reform, improvement for virtue, and knowledge, and even for beauty is only a vain sticking up for appearances as though one were anxious about the cut of one's clothes in a community of blind men."

"Thus ended the first and adventurous part of his existence. What followed was so different that, but for the reality of sorrow which remained with him, this strange part must have resembled a dream."

"I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew."

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

"You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends."

"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?"

"Facing it-always facing it-that's the way to get through. Face it!"

"This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak-the sea entering into the life of most men, and the men knowing something or everything about the sea, in the way of amusement, of travel, or of bread-winning."

"I let him run on, this papier-mâché Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried, I could poke my forefinger through him and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe."

"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."

"It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream-alone..."

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

"Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters."

"They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force--nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others."

"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."

"Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall."

"Are not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention?"

"Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live."

"He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a featherhat, walking on his hind legs."

"And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose."

"There is something haunting in the light of the moon it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul and something of its inconceivable mystery."

"The question is not how to get cured, but how to live."

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

"Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality."

"Liberty of imagination should be the most precious possession of a novelist. To try voluntarily to discover the fettering dogmas of its own inspiration, is a trick worthy of humna perverseness which, after inventing an absurdity, endeavours to find for it a pedigree of distinguished ancestors..."