It is very difficult to be wholly joyous or wholly sad on this earth. The comic, when it is human, soon takes upon itself a face of pain; and some of our grieves… have their source in weaknesses which must be recognized with smiling compassion as the common inheritance of us all. – 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