File
HEART OF DARKNESS
BY JOSEPH CONRAD
Key Quotes for analysis
"We live as we dream-alone...."
—
Joseph Conrad
(
Heart of Darkness
)
"I don't like work--no man does--but I like what is in the work--the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself not for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means."
— Joseph Conrad ( Heart of Darkness )
"... it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice."
—
Joseph Conrad
(
Heart of Darkness
)
"Your strength is just an accident owed to the weakness of others."
—
Joseph Conrad
(
Heart of Darkness
)
"No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone."
— Joseph Conrad ( Heart of Darkness )
"Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -
- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets."
— Joseph Conrad ( Heart of Darkness )
"He struggled with himself, too. I saw it
-- I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself."
— Joseph Conrad ( Heart of Darkness )
"It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dreamsensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the lifesensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream-alone..."
— Joseph Conrad ( Heart of Darkness )
"But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad."
— Joseph Conrad
( Heart of Darkness )
"The mind of man is capable of anything."
—
Joseph Conrad
(
Heart of Darkness
)
"The horror! The horror!"
—
Joseph Conrad
(
Heart of Darkness
)
"We live in the flicker -- may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday."
— Joseph Conrad
( Heart of Darkness )
"You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget."
— Joseph Conrad ( Heart of Darkness )
"We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness"
—
Joseph Conrad
(
Heart of Darkness
)
"Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is the very essence of dreams..."
— Joseph Conrad ( Heart of Darkness )
"They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance."
— Joseph Conrad ( Heart of Darkness )
"Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy"
— Joseph Conrad
( Heart of Darkness )
"I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life..."
— Joseph Conrad
( Heart of Darkness )
"His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain
-- why he did not instantly disappear."
— Joseph Conrad ( Heart of Darkness )
"Like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker."
— Joseph Conrad
( Heart of Darkness )
