Joseph Conrad idézet

oldal 2

„A viharokban és kalandokban rejtőző veszedelemnek rengeteg az árnyalata, és csak hébe-hóba fordul elő, hogy a jelenségek külső leplén érzékelhetően üt át a baljós erőszak, a gonosz szándék - az a meghatározhatatlan valami, ami megzavarja az ember eszét és összeszorítja a szívét, hogy tudja, érezze, a véletlenek kuszasága és az elemek dühe rosszakaratúan tör rá olyan erővel, amelyet már nincs hatalma kordában tartani, oly féktelen kegyetlenséggel, amely kitépi belőle a reményt és a félelmet, a fáradtság gyötrelmét és a pihenés utáni vágyat. Már csak törni, rombolni akar, megsemmisíteni mindezt, amit eddig látott, szeretett, élvezett vagy gyűlölt. Mindazt, ami drága és nélkülözhetetlen - a napfényt, a múlt emlékeit, a jövendőt -, az egész sokszínű világot el akarja törölni a szeme elől azzal az egyszerű megdöbbentő cselekedettel, hogy elrabolja tőle az életét.”

„Úgy élünk, ahogy álmodunk - egyedül.”

„Jaj annak, ki nem tanult meg fiatalon remélni és szeretni - és bízni az életben!”

„Értelmes ember mindennek megtalálja a maga módját.”

„Olyan a mi világunk, az egyiknek eltűri, hogy lovat lopjon, míg a másik a kötőfékre sem nézhet. Jó, lopja csak el azt a lovat. Rendben van. Megteszi. Talán szeret lovagolni. Viszont a kötőfék bámulásában van valami annyira kihívó, hogy az még a legjámborabb szentet is rúgásra ösztönzi.”

„Ha az ember meg akar győzni valakit, ne a megfelelő érvekben bízzon, hanem a megfelelő szavakban.”

„A szakácskönyv az egyetlen könyv, amiről elmondhatjuk, hogy boldoggá tette az embereket.”

„A hajókkal sosincs baj. Csak az emberekkel, akik rajtuk vannak!”

“It’s extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it’s just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome.”

“Perhaps life is just that… a dream and a fear.”

“Like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker.”

“the mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future”

“I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life…”

“He hated all this, and somehow he couldn't get away.”

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

“Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.”

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

“We couldn't understand because we were too far… and could not remember because we were traveling in the night of first ages, those ages that had gone, leaving hardly a sign… and no memories.”

“Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you, smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, "Come and find out".”

“We can never cease to be ourselves.”

“Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall.”

“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.”

“In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility”

“Never test another man by your own weakness.”

“I let him run on, this papier-maché 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.”

“They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares.”

“One can't live with one's finger everlastingly on one's pulse.”

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

“And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible.”

“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 much.”

“I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced”

“The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil water-way leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.”

“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.”

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

“Conrad placed on the title page an epigraph taken from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene:

"Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas,
Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please"

This also became Conrad's epitaph.”

“There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget.”

“I saw him open his mouth wide… as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him.”