Quotations from *Lord Jim*, 3 of 5
Joseph Conrad
1857-1924 Polish/British

The time was coming when I should see him loved, trusted, admired, with a legend of strength and prowess forming round his name as though he had been the stuff of a hero.
—Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

He, on his side, had that faculty of beholding at a hint the face of his desire and the shape of his dream, without which the earth would know no lover and no adventurer.
—Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

Stein lifted his hand. ‘And do you know how many opportunities I let escape; how many dreams I had lost that had come in my way?’ He shook his head regretfully. ‘It seems to me that some would have been very fine—if I had made them come true. Do you know how many? Perhaps I myself don’t know.’ ‘Whether his were fine or not,’ I said, ‘he knows of one which he certainly did not catch.’ ‘Everybody knows of one or two like that,’ said Stein; ‘and that is the trouble—the great trouble....’
—Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

Yes! few of us understand, but we all feel it though, and I say all without exception, because those who do not feel do not count.
—Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

I don’t know how much Jim understood; but I know he felt, he felt confusedly but powerfully, the demand of some such truth or some such illusion—I don’t care how you call it, there is so little difference, and the difference means so little. The thing is that in virtue of his feeling he mattered.
—Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim