Joseph Conrad

"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 inextinguish…"

"For all that has been said of the love that certain natures have professed to feel for it, for all the celebrations it had been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man.…"

"Reality, as usual, beats fiction out of sight."

"This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak."

"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."

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

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

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