He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense. – Joseph Conrad
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. – Joseph Conrad
A word carries far, very far, deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space. – Joseph Conrad
You can’t, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty. – Joseph Conrad
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. – Joseph Conrad
Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men. – Joseph Conrad
All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind. – Joseph Conrad
The sea – this truth must be confessed – has no generosity. No display of manly qualities – courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness – has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power. – Joseph Conrad
As to honor – you know – it’s a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn’t theirs. – Joseph Conrad
An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation. – Joseph Conrad
Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham. – Joseph Conrad
Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love – and to put its trust in life. – Joseph Conrad
A man’s real life is that accorded to him in the thoughts of other men by reason of respect or natural love. – Joseph Conrad
For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed for it, for all the celebrations it has 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. – Joseph Conrad
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. – Joseph Conrad
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. – Joseph Conrad
Only in men’s imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life. – Joseph Conrad