Joseph ConradThinkers

Acceptance is about understanding. One has to be thoroughly understood before being accepted.

Achievement is not the result of clear-sightedness... but they take form in a blessed, warm fog.

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.

An Age is always fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end.

Altruism is the morality of the world, just as egoism is its moving force. These two contradictory instincts , of which one is so plain and the other so mysterious, cannot serve us unless in the incomprehensible alliance of their irreconcilable antagonism.

Ambition is always lawful except when it climbs upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

An Artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.

The Artist is one who speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives... to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain... to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation-- and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear which binds together all humanity-- the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.

Betrayal is only self-betrayal. All a man can betray is his conscience.

The Book is the most intimate of objects, nearest to us for it contains our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to the truth, and our persistent leanings to error. But most of all books resemble us in their precious hold on life.