A mans most open actions have a secret side to them. – Joseph Conrad
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. – Joseph Conrad
The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil water-way leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky…. – Joseph Conrad
Life is a chaplet of little miseries, which the philosopher unstrings with a smile. Be philosophers as I am, gentlemen; sit down to the table and let us drink; nothing makes the future look so bright as surveying it through a glass of chambertin. – Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers (1844), “Chapter XLVII: A Family Affair,”