"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."

"For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed for it, for all the celebrations it has been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness."

"Fiction, at the point of development at which it has arrived, demands from the writer a spirit of scrupulous abnegation.The only legitimate of all the irreconcilable antagonisms that make our life so enigmatic, so burdensome, so fascinating, so dangerous--so full of hope. They exist! And this is the only fundamental truth of fiction."

"Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line."

"Principles? Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags-rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief."

"Preparation for the future was necessary, and he was willing to admit that the great change would perhaps come in the upheaval of a revolution. But he argued that revolutionary propaganda was a delicate work of high conscience. It was the education of the masters of the world. It should be as careful as the education given to kings."

"A certain simplicity of thought is common to serene souls at both ends of the social scale."

"Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life."

"The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness."

"It was a dark story."

"Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life."

"I had turned away from the picture and was going back to the world where events move, men change, light flickers, life flows in a clear stream, no matter whether over mud or over stones."

"No man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge."

"There too he had been treated with revolting injustice. His struggles, his privations,his hard work to raise himself in the social scale, hadfilled him with such an exalted conviction of his merits that it was extremely difficult for the world to treat him with justice- the standard of that notion depending so much upon the patience of the individual. The Professor had genius, but lacked the great social virtue of resignation."

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

"Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion."

"Who would care to question the ground of forgiveness or compassion?"

"He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference. The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion."

"To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot."

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

"This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still."

"One must not make too much of anything in life, good or bad."

"A word carries far, very far, deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space."

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

"It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible wavering and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun."

"There are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some fable of strife to be forgotten - before the end is told - even if there happens to be any end to it."

"I don't think a single one of them had any clear idea of time, as we at the end of countless ages have. They still belonged to the beginnings of time."

"Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions."

"It was a wonderful experience. She mistrusted his very slumbers--and she seemed to think I could tell her why! Thus a poor mortal seduced by the charm of an apparition might have tried to wring from another ghost the tremendous secret of the claim the other world holds over a disembodied soul astray amongst the passions of this earth. The very ground on which I stood seemed to melt under my feet. And it was so simple too; but if the spirits evoked by our fears and our unrest have ever to vouch for each other's constancy before the forlorn magicians that we are, then I--I alone of us dwellers in the flesh--have shuddered in the hopeless chill of such a task."

"It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice."

"All a man can betray is his conscience."

"A certain readiness to perish is not so very rare, but it is seldom that you meet men whose souls, steeled in the impenetrable armour of resolution, are ready to fight a losing battle to the last, the desire of peace waxes stronger as hope declines, till at last it conquers the very desire of life. Which of us here has not observed this, or maybe experienced something of that feeling in his own person - this extreme weariness of emotions, the vanity of effort, the yearning for rest?"

"The man up there raged aloud in two languages, and with a sincerity in his fury that almost convinced me I had, in some way, sinned against the harmony of the universe."

"Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart - its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life."

"You can't, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty."

"We live as we dream--alone...."

"If you want to know the age of the Earth-look upon the sea in a storm. But what storm can fully reveal the heart of a man? Between Suez and the China Sea are many nameless men who prefer to live and die unknown. This is the story of one such man. Among the great gallery of rogues and heroes thrown up on the beaches and ports-no man was more respected or more damned than-Lord Jim."

"And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets."

"Caricature: putting the face of a joke upon the body of a truth."

"The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver - over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a sombre gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself."

"It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge."

"I would just as soon have abused the old village church at home for not being a cathedral."

"Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear."

"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. That - and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm - all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask."

"As to honor - you know - it's a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn't theirs."

"In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent."

"All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell, since I am trying to interpret for you into slow speech the instantaneous effect of visual impressions."

"History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird."

"The sun was fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip with steam."

"And yet is not mankind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive devotion. And what is the pursuit of truth, after all?"