“All idealization makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity — it is to destroy it.”
Source: The Secret Agent (1907), Ch. 3
Context: 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.
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Joseph Conrad 127
Polish-British writer 1857–1924Related quotes
“To beautify life is to give it an object.”
On Oscar Wilde (1882)
Meditation:Insights and Inspirations (2010) https://books.google.com/books?id=s2ctBgAAQBAJ,
“Only what we have wrought into our character during life can we take away with us.”
As quoted in Seed-grain for Thought and Discussion (1856) by Anna Cabot Lowell, Vol. 1, p. 260
Speech given on October 1, 1840
Source: When Corporations Rule the World (1995,2015), pp. 20-21
“The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.”
On how she writes characters in “Motherhood and Migration: An Interview with Vanessa Hua on ‘A River of Stars’” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/motherhood-and-migration-an-interview-with-vanessa-hua-on-a-river-of-stars/ in Los Angeles Review of Books (2018 Sep 13)