Lord Jim

By Joseph Conrad QUOTATION: Some great men owe most of their greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for their tools the exact quality of strength that matters for their work.
ATTRIBUTION: Joseph Conrad (1857–1924), Polish-born British novelist. Marlow, in Lord Jim, ch. 42 (1900).

QUOTATION: A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he drowns.
ATTRIBUTION: Joseph Conrad (1857–1924), Polish-born British novelist. Marlow, in Lord Jim, ch. 20 (1900).

QUOTATION: Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life.
ATTRIBUTION: Joseph Conrad (1857–1924), Polish-born British novelist. Marlow, in Lord Jim, ch. 21 (1900).

QUOTATION: It is when we try to grapple with another man’s intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun.
ATTRIBUTION: Joseph Conrad (1857–1924), Polish-born British novelist. Marlow, in Lord Jim, ch. 16 (1900).

QUOTATION: 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.
ATTRIBUTION: Joseph Conrad (1857–1924), Polish-born British novelist. Marlow, in Lord Jim, ch. 13 (1900).

QUOTATION: There are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some fable of strife to be forgotten—before the end is told—even if there happens to be any end to it.
ATTRIBUTION: Joseph Conrad (1857–1924), Polish-born British novelist. Marlow, in Lord Jim, ch. 5 (1900).

QUOTATION: Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back- door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy!
ATTRIBUTION: Joseph Conrad (1857–1924), Polish-born British novelist. Marlow, in Lord Jim, ch. 5 (1900).

[1] - [2]