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All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising, for the edification of mankind, pinned down by the conditions of its existence to the earnest consideration of the most insignificant tides of reality.

— Joseph Conrad Henry James — An Appreciation (1905)

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More quotes by Joseph Conrad

Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love — and to put its trust in life!!

The sea never changes and its works, for all the talk of men, are wrapped in mystery.

Typhoon (1902)

An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.

The Mirror of the Sea (1906)

It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.

An Outcast of the Islands (1896)

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

Under Western Eyes (1911)

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Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.

Richard Francis Burton The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time.

Mircea Eliade Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (1967)

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Thomas Jefferson

The superior man loves his soul; the inferior man loves his property.

Confucius

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Joseph Conrad (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.