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. – Joseph Conrad
All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind. – Joseph Conrad
There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea. – Joseph Conrad
A mans real life is that accorded to him in the thoughts of other men by reason of respect or natural love. – Joseph Conrad
I was on the point of cutting the cord that suspended me between heaven and earth… and measured with my eye the vast space that separated me from the rest of the human race… I felt myself precipitated with a velocity that was checked by the sudden unfolding of my parachute. – André-Jacques Garnerin, 1797