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Joseph Conrad

A Personal Record

"As in political, so in literary action, a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and by the consistent narrowness of his outlook...In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility...But the danger lies in the writer becoming the victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity, and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too blunt for his purpose -- as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent emotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to snivelling and giggles."

Under Western Eyes

"Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. I have been for many years a teacher of languages...To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot."