Quotations from *Lord Jim*, 2 of 5
Joseph Conrad
1857-1924 Polish/British

There is such magnificent vagueness in the expectations that had driven each of us to sea, such a glorious indefiniteness, such a beautiful greed of adventures that are their own and only reward! What we get—well, we won’t talk of that; but can one of us restrain a smile? In no other kind of life is the illusion more wide of reality—in no other is the beginning all illusion—the disenchantment more swift—the subjugation more complete. Hadn’t we all commenced with the same desire, ended with the same knowledge, carried the memory of the same cherished glamour through the sordid days of imprecation?
—Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

He was there before me, believing that age and wisdom can find a remedy against the pain of truth...
—Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

And he had been deliberating upon death—confound him! He had found that to meditate about because he thought he had saved his life, while all its glamour had gone with the ship in the night.
—Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

He was then working for De Jongh, on my recommendation. Water-clerk.... You can’t imagine a mode of life more barren of consolation, less capable of being invested with a spark of glamour—unless it be the business of an insurance canvasser.
—Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

To bury him would have been such an easy kindness! It would have been so much in accordance with the wisdom of life, which consists in putting out of sight all the reminders of our folly, of our weakness, of our mortality; all that makes against our efficiency—the memory of our failures, the hints of our undying fears, the bodies of our dead friends. Perhaps he did take it too much to heart.
—Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

...still the idea obtrudes itself that he made so much of his disgrace while it is the guilt alone that matters. He was not—if I may say so—clear to me. He was not clear. And there is a suspicion he was not clear to himself either. There were his fine sensibilities, his fine feelings, his fine longings—a sort of sublimated, idealised selfishness. He was—if you allow me to say so—very fine; very fine—and very unfortunate. A little coarser nature would not have borne the strain; it would have had to come to terms with itself—with a grunt, or even with a guffaw; a still coarser one would have remained invulnerably ignorant and completely uninteresting.
—Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim