Heart Of Darkness Quotes

Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it. And, Oprah, can you imagine curling up in bed to read a computer? Weeping for Anna Karenina and being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz, having Holden Caulfield ring you up - some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal. ~ Harper Lee

There was nothing accidental about what happened that morning. Nothing incidental. It was no stray mugging or personal settling of scores. This was an era imprinting itself on those who lived in it.

History in live performance.

If they hurt Velutha more than they intended to, it was only because any kinship, any connection between themselves and him, any implication that if nothing else, at least biologically he was a fellow creature--had been severed long ago. They were not arresting a man, they were exorcising fear. They had no instrument to calibrate how much punishment he could take. No means of gauging how much or how permanently they had damaged him.

Unlike the custom of rampaging religious mobs or conquering armies running riot, that morning in the Heart of Darkness the posse of Touchable Policemen acted with economy, not frenzy. Efficiency, not anarchy. Responsibility, not hysteria. They didn't tear out his hair or burn him alive. They didn't hack off his genitals and stuff them in his mouth. They didn't rape him. Or behead him.

After all they were not battling an epidemic. They were merely inoculating a community against an outbreak. ~ Arundhati Roy

There's nothing we fear more than our own Reflection. We scream at the monsters within us, hidden deep within our hearts. We run and hide from the terrors all around us- the different mirrors that we see. ~ Solange Nicole

Like all true stories, it was a mix of legends and facts, of myths imagined and deeds done, of the heart of darkness and the crown of light, of experiences borne and gaps filled, of things seen and visions that could only be authenticated by the mind's eye. ~ Ken Liu

...his words - the gift of expression, the bewildering, the iluminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness. ~ Joseph Conrad

When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate those savages
hate them to the death. ~ Joseph Conrad

And, don't you see, the terror of the position was not in being knocked on the head - though I had a very lively sense of that danger, too - but in this, that I had to deal with a being to whom I could not appeal in the name of anything high or low. I had, even like the niggers, to invoke him - himself - his own exalted and incredible degradation. There was nothing either above or below him, and I knew it. He had kicked himself loose of the earth. Confound the man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces. He was alone, and I before him did not know whether I stood on the ground of floated in the air. ~ Joseph Conrad

But those who initially went to the West were overtaken by the barbarism of the frontier with astonishing speed - think Lord of the Flies or Heart of Darkness. There was murder, mayhem, robbery, alcoholism, depression, and suicide, and all of it on a positively Homeric scale that still has cultural anthropologists enraptured. ~ Simon Winchester

Beneath the handsome exterior beats a heart of darkness. ~ James Patterson

Everything is subjective. ~ Douglas Hsieh

On a deeper level, I think many stories - especially thrillers - can be a journey to the heart of darkness. ~ Terry Hayes

As one can hardly find any thing in a house where nothing keeps its place, but all is cast on a heap together; so it is in the heart where all things are in disorder, especially when darkness is added to this disorder: so that the hear t is like an obscure cave or dungeon, where there is but a little crevice of light, and a man must rather grope than see No wonder if men mistake in searching such a heat, sand so miscarry in judging of their estate (304). ~ Richard Baxter

Hope is a little candle that continues to flicker in the heart in the darkest moments of impossibility. ~ Debasish Mridha

We live as we dream--alone...."
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and the Congo Diary ~ Joseph Conrad

It had been a bad trip ... fast and wild in some moments, slow and dirty in others, but on balance it looked like a bummer. On my way back to San Francisco, I tried to compose a fitting epitaph. I wanted something original, but there was no escaping the echo of Mistah Kurtz' final words from the heart of darkness: The horror! The horror! ... Exterminate all the brutes! ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Sadness flies on the wings of the morning, and out of the heart of darkness comes the light. ~ Jean Giraudoux

Light came out of this river since - you say Knights? Yes, but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker - may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! ~ Joseph Conrad

It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice. ~ Joseph Conrad

Everything belonged to him
but that was a trifle. The thing to know was what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. ~ Joseph Conrad

On 7 October 1909 E. D.Morel, head of the Congo Reform Association,wrote A. Conan Doyle, a member, that Conrad's story [Heart of Darkness] was the "most powerful thing ever writtenon the subject. ~ Hunt Hawkins

I hate being awake at three in the morning. It is the godforsaken heart of darkness when the body runs slow, and the brain runs slower, and all you want to do is sleep. But I had promises to keep, and miles to go before I could sleep. Or at least a couple of miracles to perform before I could go to bed. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence
that which makes its truth, its meaning
its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream
alone. ~ Joseph Conrad

Our host drifted away, and Vidia and I continued chatting about this and that. Swift judgments came down. The simplicity in Hemingway was "bogus" and nothing, Vidia said, like his own. Things Fall Apart was a fine book, but Achebe's refusal to write about his decades in America was disappointing. Heart of Darkness was good, but structurally a failure. I asked him about the biography by Patrick French, The World Is What It Is, which he had authorized. He stiffened. That book, which was extraordinarily well written, was also shocking in the extent to which it revealed a nasty, petty, and insecure man. "One gives away so much in trust," Vidia said. "One expects a certain discretion. It's painful, it's painful. But that's quite all right. Others will be written. The record will be corrected." He sounded like a boy being brave after gashing his thumb. The ~ Teju Cole

People are wrong when they tell you that Conrad was on the side of Africans because his story showed great compassion towards them. Africans are not really served by his compassion, whatever it means; they ask for one thing alone – to be seen for what they are: human beings. Conrad pulls back from granting them this favour in Heart of Darkness. ~ Chinua Achebe

You know, I've read Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' about fifteen times. ~ James Balog

The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of day. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could not tell. The dawns were heralded by the descent of a chill stillness; the wood-cutters slept, their fires burned low; the snapping of a twig would make you start. We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil. ~ Joseph Conrad

Be grateful that you can't comprehend the heart of darkness", he said quietly. "Therein is the quick path to madness. ~ C.M. Palov

I saw that on Small Business Saturday, the president went shopping at a bookstore and bought 17 books, including "The Laughing Monsters," "Being Mortal," and "Heart of Darkness." Or as the cashier put it, "You OK, man? Maybe a little 'Chicken Soup for the Presidential Soul?' ~ Jimmy Fallon

I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took council with this great solitude - and the whisper has proved irresistibly fascinating. ~ Joseph Conrad

Everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places. ~ Joseph Conrad

I prefer to believe the opposite - that there is always an indestructible beauty at the heart of darkness. ~ Mary Balogh

But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad. ~ Joseph Conrad

1. A question is a prayer to one's self.
2. Wars prove that the past will destroy the future.
3. The heart of darkness will bestow either holiness or madness. A voice from the depths of the gloomy loneliness of the soul will bestow an amazing observer philosophy.
4. Abstract transformations of chance prove that there is no order and will not even be in high culture.
5. The heart of reality beats in the rhythm of verses and music of beatniks, endless improvisations of opinions are like gloomy but romantic apathy of jazz - these are timid steps to the truth, as if connecting usb wires of the logic of various people, we are connected to eternity in eternal unity, we learn the common self of humanity. Exhaling cigarette smoke looking into the future with black glasses, fear that does not see terror in our eyes, he sees through glasses only courage and courage where we seem to take the last leap into the abyss of inevitability. A ray of light hits in the distance, we go to the end from dawn to dawn, snapping our fingers, we go to the climax of truth coming out of the fog of self-deception, breathing in the air of freedom from illusions, we where there are no screens of annoying instincts and other vices of self-destruction.
6. Advertising is the harshest dictator of values.
7. Accident is communication with reality.
8. Socialization is the slavery of self-deception.
9. Loneliness is music in the soul that voices feelings and emotions permeat ~ Musin Almat Zhumabekovich

He held his mundu spread above his head to dry. The wind lifted it like a sail. He was suddenly happy. Things will get worse he thought to himself. Then better. He was walking swiftly now, towards the Heart of Darkness. As lonely as a wolf.
The God of Loss.
The God of Small Things.
Naked but for his nail varnish. (274) ~ Arundhati Roy

He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. And in spite of this he felt that then, when his love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have torn that love out of his heart; but now when as at that moment it seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew that what bound him to her could not be broken. ~ Leo Tolstoy

The sun, like a boil on the bright blue ass of day, rolled gradually forward and spread its legs wide to reveal the pubic thatch of night, a hairy darkness in which stars crawled like lice, and the moon crabbed slowly upward like an albino dog tick striving for the anal gulch. ~ Joe R. Lansdale

Mothers of young children, your work is most holy. You are fashioning the destinies of immortal souls. The powers folded up in the little ones that you hushed to sleep in your bosoms last night, are powers that shall exist forever. You are preparing them for their immortal destiny and influence. Be faithful. Take up your sacred burden reverently. Be sure that your heart is pure and that your life is sweet and clean. ~ J.R. Miller

I'm not from the heart of Atlanta, I'm from the Eastern outskirts. Stone Mountain is the town - Gambino is from there, Danger Mouse is from there. So there's a lot more greenery, lakes and a mountain you can climb everyday - all kinds of stuff that I'm into. I wear sandals, or a harness - I'm prepared to be outdoors because that's just how I am. ~ Gucci Mane

Like the destroyer, the submarine has created its own type of officer and man with language and traditions apart from the rest of the service, and yet at the heart unchangingly of the Service ~ Rudyard Kipling

Being a writer, I take thing seriously (not too seriously). I may be a young writer/self publisher, I do love to write and I want to share my stories to the world. but more importantly, I do take writing seriously. ~ Simi Sunny

You, darkness, of whom I am born- I love you more than the flame that limits the world to the circle it illumines and excludes the rest. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

O God, our merciful Father, by Your Holy Law do You work in us the true knowledge of our sin, that our heart may be penitent, and our soul humble before You. Blot out our iniquities with the blood of Your Son, cleanse our souls from the dark spots with which we have soiled them, and comfort us with the assurance of Your grace. Build Your Church with us and our children, that Your name may be glorified by many generations. Amen. ~ Martin Luther

To my mind, faith is like being in the sun. When you are in the sun, can you avoid creating a shadow? Can you shake that area of darkness that clings to you, always shaped like you, as if constantly to remind you of yourself? You can't. This shadow is doubt. And it goes wherever you go as long as you stay in the sun. And who wouldn't want to be in the sun? ~ Yann Martel

I let myself out and climb onto my bike, putting on my helmet. As soon as it's clipped tight I push up the kickstand and I'm pedaling hard down Jake's driveway. Once my heart finds a comfortable pounding rhythm, I remember how it almost beat out of my chest when I confessed to cheating on Jake. I'd never felt so trapped in my life. I thought I'd feel the same way in his living room today, waiting for him to tell me again I'm not good enough.

But I didn't, and I don't. For the first time in a long time, I feel free. ~ Karen M. McManus

It's that heart of gold, and stardust shine that makes you beautiful. ~ R.M. Broderick

There's a reason Psalm 51 is the best known of the Penitential Psalms and one of the best-loved psalms of all. It speaks to the deep pain we feel inside us when we sin, and then it shows us the mercy of God. His is the love of a Father who sees his child's stricken face - washes the tears away - and then reaches inside to create in us "a clean heart;" to breathe "a new and right spirit" within us. ~ Sarah Christmyer

Anne entered it with a sinking heart, anticipating an imprisonment of many months, and anxiously saying to herself, "Oh! when shall I leave you again? ~ Jane Austen

Prayer is often considered a weakness, a support system, which is used when we can no longer help ourselves. But this is only true when the God of our prayers is created in our own image and adapted to our own needs and concerns. When, however, prayer makes us reach out to God, not on our own but on his terms, then prayer pulls us away from self-preoccupations, encourages us to leave familiar ground, and challenges us to enter into a new world which cannot be contained within the narrow boundaries of our mind or heart. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

the sultry darkness into which the students now followed him was visible and crimson, like the darkness of closed eyes on a summer's afternoon. The bulging flanks of row on receding row and tier above tier of bottles glinted with innumerable rubies, and among the rubies moved the dim red spectres of men and women with purple eyes and all the symptoms of lupus. ~ Aldous Huxley

Because slave life had "busted her legs, back, head, eyes, hands, kidneys, womb and tongue," she had nothing left to make a living with but her heart
which she put to work at once. Accepting no title of honor before her name, but allowing a small caress after it, she became an unchurched preacher, one who visited pulpits and opened her great heart to those who could use it. ~ Toni Morrison

While I do not want anyone to miss out on possibly living forever with God, I have come to realize that the Christian life is a marathon. People grow in their faith at different paces depending on their own circumstances in life. The key is to share, love, and encourage people to put their faith in Christ, and when they don't respond, we simply offer a place of forgiveness to come back to if or when their heart changes. We do not judge or police those who choose not to accept Christ, but we wish them the best of luck. They're going to need it. ~ Jase Robertson

Life is a whirlwind of many opportunities. Choose to embrace all of them in deepest gratitude. Learn to forgive yourself and honour the heart that beats within you, as well as the head that rests on your shoulders. Learn how to believe in people again and not be judging or cynical to various beliefs.
We are all of one light on this one Earth, and loving humanity makes all the difference. ~ Michelle Cruz-Rosado

[F]or he had heard an inarticulate promise: he has been pierced by Spring, that sharp knife. And life unscales its rusty weathered pelt, and earth wells out in tender exhaustless strength, and the cup of a man's heart runs over with dateless expectancy, tongueless promise, indefinable desire. Something gathers in the throat, something blinds him in the eyes, and faint and valorous horns sound through the earth. ~ Thomas Wolfe

She sang.
Wordless hymns of the sea: immediate, extemporized passages about waves and sunlight and tides and the constant, beautiful pressure of water on everything. The glory of seaweed slowly swaying, the delicious feeling that foretold a storm in the Dry World and turbulence below.
The music came out of her without pause, driven by years of observing, seeing, listening, enjoying, experiencing the world and unable to express it. The wonder and sadness of being alive. The joy of being a mermaid; the pain of being the only one like herself- the only mermaid who had been mortal, temporarily, and then lost everything. ~ Liz Braswell

Every time I feel my belly button, I feel great gratitude that I have a navel. I'm grateful to be alive, I'm grateful that I'm connected with the incredible life force of the universe, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude that I am receiving the blessings of life energy. The gratitude and humbleness I feel before the great cycle of life automatically fills my heart to overflowing. ~ Ilchi Lee

When I call his name, it's a sound almost entirely out of my control. It soars over the crowd and hits him. Even from where I'm standing, I can tell that he recognized my voice. Hastily he unwinds himself from the girl, stands to attention like an animal sensing danger. And I try to call him again, but that word, that name, was all I had the energy for. I barely have the strength left to stand.
I wait helplessly for him to find the sound, and when he does, when his heterochromatic eyes meet mine, my mouth forms the word again, but just barely. The girl at his side disappears. The crowd blurs into senseless shapes and colors. I can't feel my heart or my body or the heat of the flames.
I can only see his face - his bewildered, beautifully familiar face. ~ Lauren DeStefano

So, yeah, we go through some terrible things together, and I've seen versions of you who are darker, and damaged, and I don't care. I want you even when you're broken. I want you no matter what. Your darkness, your anger, whatever it is you fear inside yourself - it doesn't matter. I love you completely, don't you see? I even want the worst of you because it's still a part of you. ~ Claudia Gray

If you don't think you have any blessings in your life ... always remember that you're alive and your heart is still beating . That itself is a miracle. ~ Timothy Pina

But that's always a certain way to recognise a facist: when he's more powerful he kills everything that's different from him, he uses only brute force while law breaks like glass under his boots. And then, when he loses and when he's weak, he invokes the law and tolerance of differences. All of a sudden, he knows by heart every single human rights convention he broke so many times before. ~ Andrej Nikolaidis

I so love you! It is like my heart wants to be one with yours. I feel it melting inside of me, and like sunshine flowing out through cracks and streaming into your heart. ~ Earl Lovelace

Scripture makes it clear that these responses are not forced upon us by the pressures of the situation. What I do comes from inside me. The things that happen to me will influence my responses but never determine them. Rather, these responses flow out of the thoughts and motives of my heart. ~ Timothy S. Lane

14. Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord. ~ Anonymous

Then at a certain moment they lose heart, and the storm that was outside comes inside -- the storm is within them too. Anguish, death no longer simply circle round, they come inside. And then they turn to Christ and do what we very often do with God: we look at God in time of stress and tragedy, and we are indignant that He is so peaceful. The story in the Gospel underlines it by saying that Christ was sleeping with His head on a pillow- the final insult. They are dying and He is comfortable. This is exactly what we feel about God so often. How dare He be blissful, how dare He be so comfortable when I am in trouble? And the disciples do exactly what we do so very often. Instead of coming to God and saying 'You are peace, you are the Lord, say a word and my servant will be healed, say a word and things will come right', they shake Him out of His sleep and say 'Don't you care that we are perishing?' In other words, 'If you can do nothing, at least don't sleep. If you can do nothing better, then at least die in anguish with us.' Christ reacts, He gets up and says 'Men of little faith!' and brushing them aside, He turns towards the storm and, projecting His inner stillness, His harmony and peace on the storm He says 'Be still, be quiet' and everything is quiet again. ~ Anthony Bloom

If eternity had a season, it would be midsummer. Autumn, winter, spring are all change and passage, but at the height of summer the year stands poised. It's only a passing moment, but even as it passes the heart knows it cannot change. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

And the speck of my heart, in my shed of flesh and bone, began to sing out, the way the sun would sing if the sun could sing, if light had a mouth and a tongue, if the sky had a throat, if god wasn't just an idea but shoulders and a spine, gathered from everywhere, even the most distant planets, blazing up. Where am I? Even the rough words come to me now, quick as thistles. Who made your tyrant's body, your thirst, your delving, your gladness? Oh tiger, oh bone-breaker, oh tree on fire! Get away from me. Come closer. ~ Mary Oliver

Open your heart, love will find you. Open your eyes, you'll see love. Open your mouth and you'll speak full of love.
– Sir Kristian Goldmund Aumann ~ Kristian Goldmund Aumann

Love and Time
When you love someone it feels like you have nothing but time.
As time flows sometime Love and Times you will Fall out of love or realize they are not the love for you.
If loves fails never regret or reject it just embrace the time spent together.
Rejoice for the time you spent knowing each other and the love that you will always store in your heart. ~ Charles E Hudson