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
This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still. – 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. – Joseph Conrad
Some great men owe most of their greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for their tools the exact quality of strength that matters for their work. – Joseph Conrad
Look out into the July night, and see the broad belt of silver flame which flashes up the half of heaven, fresh and delicate as the bonfires of the meadow-flies. Yet the powers of numbers cannot compute its enormous age,—lasting as space and time,—embosomed in time and space. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Progress of Culture”