Joseph Conrad
  • Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.

  • The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

  • History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.

  • Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

  • Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.