Joseph Conrad on Life

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

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

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

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

"Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end."

"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."

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

"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."

"The truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy known but to few on this Earth, and whom only the simplest of us are fit to withstand. The brilliant Costaguanaro of the boulevards had died from solitude and want of faith in himself and others."