Polish-born English novelist Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) spent years at sea before turning his experiences into stories that probed character, conscience, and the shadows of the human heart. He believed deeply in the dignity of honest work:
“A
man is a worker.
If he is
not that he is
nothing.”
A man’s most open actions have a secret side to them.
All creative art is magic, an evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar, and surprising.
Did you know that “if” is the middle of the word “life”?
Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end.
Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.
Of all the inanimate objects, of all men’s creations, books are the nearest to us, for they contain our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to the truth, and our persistent leanings to error.
Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.
I don’t like work… but I like what is in work — the chance to find yourself. Your own reality for yourself, not for others, which no other man can ever know.
Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.
Perhaps life is just that… a dream and a fear.
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.