Joseph Conrad citáty

Zdroj: Heart of Darkness

Zdroj: An Outcast of the Islands (1896), Pt. 3, Ch. 2; possibly an adaptation of a Polish proverb, "Ten się nie myli, kto nic nie robi" — "One is not wrong, who does nothing."

Zdroj: Heart of Darkness

Pt. II, ch. 4
Zdroj: Under Western Eyes (1911)

Zdroj: Heart of Darkness

Typhoon (1902), Ch. 5

Zdroj: Heart of Darkness

Zdroj: Heart of Darkness

Zdroj: The Mirror of the Sea (1906), Ch. 35
Kontext: For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) 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. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.

Zdroj: Heart of Darkness

Zdroj: The Secret Agent

Letter (March 1890), published in The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, edited by Frederick R. Karl and Laurence Davies, Vol. 1, p. 43 ISBN 0521242169

Command at Sea: the Prestige, Privilege and Burden of Command

Zdroj: Heart of Darkness

Zdroj: The Secret Sharer and other stories

Varianta: My task is to make you hear, to make you feel, and, above all, to make you see. That is all, and it is everything.
Zdroj: Lord Jim

Zdroj: Heart of Darkness

Zdroj: The Secret Agent (1907), Ch. 3
Kontext: All idealization makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity — it is to destroy it. Leave that to the moralists, my boy. History is made by men, but they do not make it in their heads. The ideas that are born in their consciousness play an insignificant part in the march of events. History is dominated and determined by the tool and the production — by the force of economic conditions. Capitalism has made socialism, and the laws made by the capitalist for the protection of property are responsible for anarchism. No one can tell what form the social organisation may take in the future. Then why indulge in prophetic phantasies? At best they can only interpret the mind of the prophet, and can have no objective value. Leave that pastime to the moralists, my boy.

Zdroj: Heart of Darkness

Zdroj: Heart of Darkness

Zdroj: Heart of Darkness

Zdroj: Heart of Darkness

Zdroj: Heart of Darkness

Zdroj: Heart of Darkness

Zdroj: The Secret Agent (1907), Ch. 13
Kontext: All passion is lost now. The world is mediocre, limp, without force. And madness and despair are a force. And force is a crime in the eyes of the fools, the weak and the silly who rule the roost. You are mediocre. Verloc, whose affair the police has managed to smother so nicely, was mediocre. And the police murdered him. He was mediocre. Everybody is mediocre. Madness and despair! Give me that for a lever, and I'll move the world. Ossipon, you have my cordial scorn. You are incapable of conceiving even what the fat-fed citizen would call a crime. You have no force.

Pt. I
Under Western Eyes (1911)
Kontext: Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. I have been for many years a teacher of languages. It is an occupation which at length becomes fatal to whatever share of imagination, observation, and insight an ordinary person may be heir to. 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.

Zdroj: Heart of Darkness