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| Joseph Conrad
A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth. A man's most open actions have a secret side to them. An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation. As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and the consistent narrowness of his outlook. As to honor - you know - it's a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn't theirs.Being a woman is a difficult trade, since it consists principally of dealing with men. Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men. Don't talk to me of your Archimedes' lever. He was an absentminded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world. Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it. History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird. I had ambition not only to go farther than any man had ever been before, but as far as it was possible for a man to go. It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog. It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth. Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham. The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of Westerly Weather, is an impassive-faced tyrant with a sharp poniard held behind his back for a treacherous stab. The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage. They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience. This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still. 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. Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praiseworthy sincerity which, while it delivers one into the hands of one's enemies, is as likely as not to embroil one with one's friends. You can't, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty. You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends. |
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