Quotations from *Under Western Eyes*, 12 of 12
Joseph Conrad
1857-1924 Polish/British

"One must look beyond the present." Her tone had an ardent conviction.

"The blind can do that best. I have had the misfortune to be born clear-eyed. And if you only knew what strange things I have seen! What amazing and unexpected apparitions!... But why talk of all this?"
—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

He had lowered at last his fascinated glance; she too was looking down, and standing thus before each other in the glaring light, between the four bare walls, they seemed brought out from the confused immensity of the Eastern borders to be exposed cruelly to the observation of my Western eyes.
—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

"Revolutionist and reactionary, victim and executioner, betrayer and betrayed, they shall all be pitied together when the light breaks on our black sky at last. Pitied and forgotten; for without that there can be no union and no love."
—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

"You've got very wet."

"Yes, I am washed clean," muttered Razumov, who was dripping from head to foot, and passed through the inner door towards the staircase leading to his room.
—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

"After all, it is they and not I who have the right on their side?—theirs is the strength of invisible powers. So be it. Only don't be deceived, Natalia Victorovna, I am not converted. Have I then the soul of a slave? No! I am independent—and therefore perdition is my lot."
—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

She sat down and leaned her head on her hand thoughtfully. The silence lasted for several minutes.
—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

"Yes. I am leaving here to-morrow. My eyes are open at last and my hands are free now. As for the rest—which of us can fail to hear the stifled cry of our great distress? It may be nothing to the world."

"The world is more conscious of your discordant voices," I said. "It is the way of the world."
—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

"There are evil moments in every life."
—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

And this story, too, I received without comment in my character of a mute witness of things Russian, unrolling their Eastern logic under my Western eyes.
—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes