Quotations from *Under Western Eyes*, 5 of 12
Joseph Conrad
1857-1924 Polish/British

I received the impression that behind these dark spectacles of his he could be as impudent as he chose.
—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

"And no woman can remain sitting on the steps. Flowers, tears, applause—that has had its time; it's a mediaeval conception. The arena, the arena itself is the place for women!"

He relinquished her hand with a flourish, as if giving it to her for a gift, and remained still, his head bowed in dignified submission before her femininity.

"The arena!... You must descend into the arena, Natalia."

He made one step backwards, inclined his enormous body, and was gone swiftly. The door fell to behind him. But immediately the powerful resonance of his voice was heard addressing in the ante-room the middle-aged servant woman who was letting him out. Whether he exhorted her too to descend into the arena I cannot tell. The thing sounded like a lecture, and the slight crash of the outer door cut it short suddenly.
—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

"Your brother believed in the power of a people's will to achieve anything?"

"It was his religion," declared Miss Haldin.
—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

"Reform is impossible. There is nothing to reform. There is no legality, there are no institutions. There are only arbitrary decrees. There is only a handful of cruel—perhaps blind—officials against a nation."
—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

The last thing I want to tell you is this: in a real revolution—not a simple dynastic change or a mere reform of institutions—in a real revolution the best characters do not come to the front. A violent revolution falls into the hands of narrow-minded fanatics and of tyrannical hypocrites at first. Afterwards comes the turn of all the pretentious intellectual failures of the time. Such are the chiefs and the leaders. You will notice that I have left out the mere rogues. The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement—but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims: the victims of disgust, of disenchantment—often of remorse. Hopes grotesquely betrayed, ideals caricatured—that is the definition of revolutionary success.
—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

"The true progress must begin after. And for that the right men shall be found. They are already amongst us. One comes upon them in their obscurity, unknown, preparing themselves...."

She spread out the letter she had kept in her hand all the time, and looking down at it—

"Yes! One comes upon such men!" she repeated, and then read out the words, "Unstained, lofty, and solitary existences."
—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

Thinking it over, later on, while I walked slowly away from the Boulevard des Philosophes, I asked myself critically, what precisely was it that she wanted to know?
—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

In the educational establishment for girls where Miss Haldin finished her studies she was looked upon rather unfavourably. She was suspected of holding independent views on matters settled by official teaching.
—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

I am not ancient enough as yet to be strikingly decrepit. I have no long beard like the good hermit of a romantic ballad; my footsteps are not tottering, my aspect not that of a slow, venerable sage. Those picturesque advantages are not mine. I am old, alas, in a brisk, commonplace way.
—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

Do you understand how frightful that is—nothing to look forward to! Sometimes I think that it is only in Russia that there are such people and such a depth of misery can be reached.
—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes