14 quotes
This is the saddest story I have ever heard.
The Good Soldier (1915)
For the judging of contemporary literature the only test is one's personal taste.
The March of Literature (1939)
Pride and reserve are not the only things in life; perhaps they are not even the best things. But if they happen to be your particular virtues you will go all to pieces if you let them go.
The Good Soldier (1915)
Only two classes of books are of universal appeal: the very best and the very worst.
Joseph Conrad : A Personal Remembrance (1924)
I couldn't regard myself as personally repulsive. No man can, or, if he ever comes to do so, that is the end of him.
The Good Soldier (1915)
You may well ask why I write. And yet my reasons are quite many.
The Good Soldier (1915)
What the artist wishes to do — as far as you are concerned — is to take you out of yourself. As far as he is concerned, he wishes to express himself.
It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has got the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it; it is beyond me.
The Good Soldier (1915)
All he desired in life was that…the girl, being five thousand miles away, would continue to love him. He wanted nothing more, He prayed his God for nothing more.
If for nine years I have possessed a goodly apple that is rotten at the core and discover its rottenness only in nine years and six months less four days, isn't it true to say that for nine years I possessed a goodly apple?
The Good Soldier (1915)
To Leonora's eternal question he answered that all he desired in life was that — that he could pick himself together again and go on with his daily occupations if — the girl, being five thousand miles away, would continue to love him.
The Good Soldier (1915)
Mind, I am not preaching anything contrary to accepted morality. I am not advocating free love in this or any other case. Society must go on, I suppose, and society can only exist if the normal, if the virtuous, and the slightly deceitful flourish, and if the passionate, the headstrong, and the too-truthful are condemned to suicide and to madness.
The Good Soldier (1915)
No more Hope, no more Glory, no more parades for you and me any more. Nor for the country... nor for the world, I dare say... None... Gone.
Parade's End: No More Parades (1925)
Our intimacy was like a minuet, simply because on every possible occasion and in every possible circumstance we knew where to go, where to sit, which table we unanimously should choose; and we could rise and go, all four together, without a signal from any one of us, always to the music of the Kur orchestra, always in the temperate sunshine, or, if it rained, in discreet shelters.
The Good Soldier (1915)