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
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
It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull. – Joseph Conrad
Only in mens imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life. – Joseph Conrad
And to my thinking as a lover of life, butterflies, soap-bubbles, and whatever is of their kind among men, know most of happiness. To see these light, foolish, delicate, mobile little souls flitting about—that moveth Zarathustra to tears and to song. – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), “Of Reading and Writing,” Thus Spake Zarathus