The Sea Has Never Been Friendly To

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 Griefs (some Only, Not All, For It Is The Capacity For Suffering Which Makes Man August In The Eyes Of Men) Have Their Source In Weaknesses Which Must Be Recognized With Smiling Com Passion As The Common Inheritance Of Us All.

All Ambitions Are Lawful Except Those Which Climb Upward On The Miseries Or Credulities Of Mankind. All Intellectual And Artistic Ambitions Are Permissible, Up To And Even Beyond The Limit Of Prudent Sanity. They Can Hurt No One.

The Humblest Craft That Floats Makes Its Appeal To A Seaman By The Faithfulness Of Her Life.

Conrad Placed On The Title Page An Epigraph Taken From Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene: "sleep After Toyle, Port After Stormie Seas, Ease After Warre, Death After Life, Does Greatly Please" This Also Became Conrad's Epitaph.

It’s Extraordinary How We Go Through Life With Eyes Half Shut, With Dull Ears, With Dormant Thoughts. Perhaps It’s Just As Well; And It May Be That It Is This Very Dullness That Makes Life To The Incalculable Majority So Supportable And So Welcome.