Heart Of Darkness And The Secret Sharer Quotes
"There must have been some glare in the air to interfere with one’s sight, because it was only just before the sun left us that my roaming eyes made out beyond the highest ridges of the principal islet of the group something which did away with the solemnity of perfect solitude."
"The tide of darkness flowed on swiftly; and with tropical suddenness a swarm of stars came out above the shadowy earth, while I lingered yet, my hand resting lightly on my ship’s rail as if on the shoulder of a trusted friend."
"But, with all that multitude of celestial bodies staring down at one, the comfort of quiet communion with her was gone for good."
"The youngest man on board (barring the second mate), and untried as yet by a position of the fullest responsibility, I was willing to take the adequacy of the others for granted."
"I wondered how far I should turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one’s own personality every man sets up for himself secretly."
"He was complete but for the head. A headless corpse!"
"And then I was left alone with my ship, anchored at the head of the Gulf of Siam."
"The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light."
"The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires."
"And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, 'followed the sea' with reverence and affection, than to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames."
"We live in the flicker—may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday."
"The fascination of the abomination—you know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate."
"Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is efficiency—the devotion to efficiency."
"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."
"I don’t want to bother you much with what happened to me personally, yet to understand the effect of it on me you ought to know how I got out there, what I saw, how I went up that river to the place where I first met the poor chap."
"I had then, as you remember, just returned to London after a lot of Indian Ocean, Pacific, China Seas—a regular dose of the East—six years or so, and I was loafing about, hindering you fellows in your work and invading your homes, just as though I had got a heavenly mission to civilize you."
"Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration."
"I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago—the other day…."
"It was like watching the last flickers of a life."
"Your own reality—for yourself, not for others—what no other man can ever know."
"The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there—there you could look at a thing monstrous and free."
"The mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future."
"It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention."
"I don’t like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work—the chance to find yourself."
"It was really a case of legitimate self-defense."
"No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is."
"It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly."
"He struggled with himself, too. I saw it—I heard it."
"I had all his noble confidence. I knew him best."