A Personal Record quotes

One of them bears upon the question of language.

I have always felt myself looked upon somewhat in the light of a phenomenon, a position which outside the circus world cannot be regarded as desirable.

It needs a special temperament for one to derive much gratification from the fact of being able to do freakish things intentionally, and, as it were, from mere vanity.

It was not an argument, but I submitted at once. If one must! …

You perceive the force of a word.

He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense. I don’t say this by way of disparagement.

The right accent. That’s very important. The capacious lung, the thundering or the tender vocal chords. 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.

What a dream for a writer! Because written words have their accent, too. Yes! Let me only find the right word!

“Let all thy words have the accent of heroic truth.” The accent of heroic truth! This is very fine, but I am thinking that it is an easy matter for an austere emperor to jot down grandiose advice.

Most of the working truths on this earth are humble, not heroic; and there have been times in the history of mankind when the accents of heroic truth have moved it to nothing but derision.

Nobody will expect to find between the covers of this little book words of extraordinary potency or accents of irresistible heroism. However humiliating for my self-esteem, I must confess that the counsels of Marcus Aurelius are not for me.

“To disappoint one’s friends” would be nearer the mark. Most, almost all, friendships of the writing period of my life have come to me through my books; and I know that a novelist lives in his work.

He stands there, the only reality in an invented world, among imaginary things, happenings, and people.

Writing about them, he is only writing about himself. But the disclosure is not complete. He remains, to a certain extent, a figure behind the veil; a suspected rather than a seen presence—a movement and a voice behind the draperies of fiction.

I would not unduly praise the virtue of restraint. It is often merely temperamental. But it is not always a sign of coldness. It may be pride.

There can be nothing more humiliating than to see the shaft of one’s emotion miss the mark of either laughter or tears.

Nothing more humiliating! And this for the reason that should the mark be missed, should the open display of emotion fail to move, then it must perish unavoidably in disgust or contempt.

And then—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 compassion as the common inheritance of us all.

… 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.

These may seem selfish considerations; but you can’t, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty. And least of all can you condemn an artist pursuing, however humbly and imperfectly, a creative aim.

The sight of human affairs deserves admiration and pity. They are worthy of respect, too. And he is not insensible who pays them the undemonstrative tribute of a sigh which is not a sob, and of a smile which is not a grin.

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.

Not that I think resignation the last word of wisdom. I am too much the creature of my time for that.

I am too much the creature of my time for that. But I think that the proper wisdom is to will what the gods will without, perhaps, being certain what their will is—or even if they have a will of their own.

And in this matter of life and art it is not the Why that matters so much to our happiness as the How.

As the Frenchman said, “Il y a toujours la manière.” Very true. Yes. There is the manner. The manner in laughter, in tears, in irony, in indignations and enthusiasms, in judgments—and even in love.

The manner in which, as in the features and character of a human face, the inner truth is foreshadowed for those who know how to look at their kind.

Those who read me know my conviction that the world, the temporal world, rests on a few very simple ideas; so simple that they must be as old as the hills.

It rests notably, among others, on the idea of Fidelity. At a time when nothing which is not revolutionary in some way or other can expect to attract much attention I have not been revolutionary in my writings.

“Alas!” I protested, mildly. “Could I begin with the sacramental words, ‘I was born on such a date in such a place?’ The remoteness of the locality would have robbed the statement of all interest.

I haven’t lived through wonderful adventures to be related seriatim.

I haven’t known distinguished men on whom I could pass fatuous remarks. I haven’t been mixed up with great or scandalous affairs.

Books may be written in all sorts of places.

Verbal inspiration may enter the berth of a mariner on board a ship frozen fast in a river in the middle of a town;

“What are you always scribbling there, if it’s fair to ask?”

It was a fair enough question, but I did not answer him, and simply turned the pad over with a movement of instinctive secrecy

: I could not have told him he had put to flight the psychology of Nina Almayer, her opening speech of the tenth chapter and the words of Mrs. Almayer’s wisdom which were to follow in the ominous oncoming of a tropical night.

I do not mean this for the well-known firm of London ship-brokers which had chartered the ship to the, I will not say short-lived, but ephemeral Franco-Canadian Transport Company. A death leaves something behind, but there was never anything tangible left from the F.C.T.C.

It flourished no longer than roses live, and unlike the roses it blossomed in the dead of winter, emitted a sort of faint perfume of adventure, and died before spring set in.

But indubitably it was a company, it had even a house-flag, all white with the letters F.C.T.C. artfully tangled up in a complicated monogram.

… while looking at a map of Africa of the time and putting my finger on the blank space then representing the unsolved mystery of that continent, I said to myself with absolute assurance and an amazing audacity which are no longer in my character now:

“When I grow up I shall go there.”

And of course I thought no more about it till after a quarter of a century or so an opportunity offered to go there—as if the sin of childish audacity were to be visited on my mature head. Yes. I did go there:

Only in men’s imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence.

Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

An imaginative and exact rendering of authentic memories may serve worthily that spirit of piety towards all things human which sanctions the conceptions of a writer of tales, and the emotions of the man reviewing his own experience.

yet it is not that sentiment, strong as it was, which resumes for me the force and the significance of his personality. It is overborne by another and complex impression of awe, compassion and horror.

Mr. Nicholas B. remains for me the unfortunate and miserable (but heroic) being who once upon a time had eaten a dog.

It is a good forty years since I heard the tale, and the effect has not worn off yet. I believe this is the very first, say, realistic, story I heard in my life;

And his grandmother remarks with a smile:

“Perhaps you don’t know what it is to be hungry.”

I have learned something of it since. Not that I have been reduced to eat dog. I have fed on the emblematical animal, which, in the language of the volatile Gauls, is called la vache enragée;

… for the sake of an unappeasable and patriotic desire, in the glow of a great faith that lives still, and in the pursuit of a great illusion kindled like a false beacon by a great man to lead astray the effort of a brave nation.

Looked at in that light it appears a sweet and decorous meal.

And looked at in the same light, my own diet of la vache enragée appears a fatuous and extravagant form of self-indulgence;

The inner voice may remain true enough in its secret counsel. The fidelity to a special tradition may last through the events of an unrelated existence, following faithfully, too, the traced way of an inexplicable impulse.

It would take too long to explain the intimate alliance of contradictions in human nature which makes love itself wear at times the desperate shape of betrayal.

And perhaps there is no possible explanation. Indulgence—as somebody said—is the most intelligent of all the virtues. I venture to think that it is one of the least common, if not the most uncommon of all.

It would take too long to explain the intimate alliance of contradictions in human nature which makes love itself wear at times the desperate shape of betrayal. And perhaps there is no possible explanation.

Indulgence⁠—as somebody said⁠—is the most intelligent of all the virtues.

I venture to think that it is one of the least common, if not the most uncommon of all. I would not imply by this that men are foolish—or even most men. Far from it.

Mad! Mad! He who kept in pious meditation the ritual vigil-of-arms by the well of an inn and knelt reverently to be knighted at daybreak by the fat, sly rogue of a landlord, has come very near perfection.

He rides forth, his head encircled by a halo⁠—the patron saint of all lives spoiled or saved by the irresistible grace of imagination.

But he was not a good citizen.

I need not say that these are unfavourable. It was morally reprehensible for that great captain to induce a simple-minded Polish gentleman to eat dog by raising in his breast a false hope of national independence.

It has been the fate of that credulous nation to starve for upwards of a hundred years on a diet of false hopes and⁠—well⁠—dog.

It is, when one thinks of it, a singularly poisonous regimen. Some pride in the national constitution which has survived a long course of such dishes is really excusable. But enough of generalising. Returning to particulars, Mr. Nicholas B.

When asked whether he had not been sorely tempted during the Hundred Days to make his way again to France and join the service of his beloved Emperor, Mr. Nicholas B. used to mutter:

“No money. No horse. Too far to walk.”

The fall of Napoleon and the ruin of national hopes affected adversely the character of Mr. Nicholas B. He shrank from returning to his province. But for that there was also another reason. Mr. Nicholas B.

The gentleman’s name was Bezak. A high dignitary, an energetic official, the idol for a time of the Russian Patriotic Press.

Each generation has its memories.

Leaning over the rail of the bridge I looked at Almayer, who looked down at the wharf in aggrieved thought. He shuffled his feet a little; he wore straw slippers with thick soles. The morning fog had thickened considerably.

Everything round us dripped⁠—the derricks, the rails, every single rope in the ship⁠—as if a fit of crying had come upon the universe.

Almayer again raised his head and, in the accents of a man accustomed to the buffets of evil fortune, asked hardly audibly: “I suppose you haven’t got such a thing as a pony on board?”

he arched his pretty neck; he was perfectly delightful; he was charmingly naughty. There was not an atom of vice in that performance; no savage baring of teeth and laying back of ears. On the contrary, he pricked them forward in a comically aggressive manner.

He was totally unmoral and lovable; I would have liked to give him bread, sugar, carrots.

But life is a stern thing and the sense of duty the only safe guide. So I steeled my heart and from my elevated position on the bridge I ordered the men to fling themselves upon him in a body.

Without pausing, without thinking, almost without looking, he disengaged the hook suddenly from the sling, and the cargo-chain, after hitting the pony’s quarters, swung back against the ship’s side with a noisy, rattling slap.

I suppose I must have blinked. I know I missed something, because the next thing I saw was Almayer lying flat on his back on the jetty. He was alone.

Astonishment deprived me of speech long enough to give Almayer time to pick himself up in a leisurely and painful manner. The kalashes lining the rail had all their mouths open.

He glanced at it when I spoke and, for a moment, it looked as if he were on the point of opening his fingers and letting the whole lot fall overboard. I believe he was tempted to do so.

I shall never forget that man afraid of his letters.

“Have you been long out from Europe?” he asked me.

I like the worthy folk who will talk to you of the exercise of free will “at any rate for practical purposes.”

Free, is it? For practical purposes! Bosh!

How could I have refused to dine with that man? I did not refuse simply because I could not refuse.

No doubt! But reflect, O complaining Shade! that this was not so much my fault as your crowning misfortune. I believed in you in the only way it was possible for me to believe. It was not worthy of your merits? So be it.

But you were always an unlucky man, Almayer. Nothing was ever quite worthy of you.

What made you so real to me was that you held this lofty theory with some force of conviction and with an admirable consistency.”

He will comfort you. You came to me stripped of all prestige by men’s queer smiles and the disrespectful chatter of every vagrant trader in the Islands.

Your name was the common property of the winds: it, as it were, floated naked over the waters about the Equator.

I wrapped round its unhonoured form the royal mantle of the tropics and have essayed to put into the hollow sound the very anguish of paternity—feats which you did not demand from me—but remember that all the toil and all the pain were mine.

… universe involves us at last in so many cruel and absurd contradictions, where the last vestiges of faith, hope, charity, and even of reason itself, seem ready to perish, that I have come to suspect that the aim of creation cannot be ethical at all.

I would fondly believe that its object is purely spectacular: a spectacle for awe, love, adoration, or hate, if you like, but in this view⁠—and in this view alone⁠—never for despair!

Those visions, delicious or poignant, are a moral end in themselves. The rest is our affair—the laughter, the tears, the tenderness, the indignation, the high tranquillity of a steeled heart, the detached curiosity of a subtle mind—that’s our affair!

He had no imagination, as the most casual perusal of Émile will prove. He was no novelist, whose first virtue is the exact understanding of the limits traced by the reality of his time to the play of his invention.

Inspiration comes from the earth, which has a past, a history, a future, not from the cold and immutable heaven.

A writer of imaginative prose (even more than any other sort of artist) stands confessed in his works. His conscience, his deeper sense of things, lawful and unlawful, gives him his attitude before the world.

A cruel spectacle—a most deplorable adventure. “Life,” in the words of an immortal thinker of, I should say, bucolic origin, but whose perishable name is lost to the worship of posterity—“life is not all beer and skittles.”

Neither is the writing of novels. It isn’t really.

Je vous donne ma parole d’honneur that it—is—not. Not all. I am thus emphatic because some years ago, I remember, the daughter of a general. …

… men with the might of their Creator, in a great isolation from the world, without the amenities and consolations of life, a lonely struggle under a sense of overmatched littleness, for no reward that could be adequate, but for the mere winning of a longitude.

Yet a certain longitude, once won, cannot be disputed.

The sun and the stars and the shape of your earth are the witnesses of your gain; whereas a handful of pages, no matter how much you have made them your own, are at best but an obscure and questionable spoil. Here they are. “Failure”—“Astonishing”:

I picked myself up quickly, of course; in other words, I jumped up from my chair stunned and dazed, every nerve quivering with the pain of being uprooted out of one world and flung down into another—perfectly civil.

“Oh! How do you do? Won’t you sit down?”

That’s what I said. This horrible but, I assure you, perfectly true reminiscence tells you more than a whole volume of confessions à la Jean Jacques Rousseau would do. Observe!

She accepted the denial in perfect good faith. And it was strictly true. Interrupted—indeed!

She had robbed me of at least twenty lives, each infinitely more poignant and real than her own

, because informed with passion, possessed of convictions, involved in great affairs created out of my own substance for an anxiously meditated end.

Were I to advance the plea of youth in excuse of the naiveness to be found in these pages, he would be likely to say “Bosh!” in a column and a half of fierce print.

Yet a writer is no older than his first published book

, and, notwithstanding the vain appearances of decay which attend us in this transitory life, I stand here with the wreath of only fifteen short summers on my brow.

Perhaps I should not have used the word literary. That word presupposes an intimacy of acquaintance with letters, a turn of mind and a manner of feeling to which I dare lay no claim.

I only love letters; but the love of letters does not make a literary man, any more than the love of the sea makes a seaman.

And it is very possible, too, that I love the letters in the same way a literary man may love the sea he looks at from the shore—a scene of great endeavour and of great achievements changing the face of the world, the great open …

… of the great sea, which must have somehow reached my inland cradle and entered my unconscious ear, like that formula of Mohammedan faith the Mussulman father whispers into the ear of his newborn infant, making him one of the faithful almost with his first breath.

I do not know whether I have been a good seaman, but I know I have been a very faithful one.

And after all there is that handful of “characters” from various ships to prove that all these years have not been altogether a dream.

So be it! Who would cavil at the words of a friendly reader? Yet perhaps not such an unconditional dreamer as all that. I will make bold to say that neither at sea nor ashore have I ever lost the sense of responsibility.

There is more than one sort of intoxication.

Even before the most seductive reveries I have remained mindful of that sobriety of interior life, that asceticism of sentiment, in which alone the naked form of truth, such as one conceives it, such as one feels it, can be rendered without shame.

His old thin hands loosely clasped resting on his crossed legs, he began by an elementary question in a mild voice, and went on, went on. … It lasted for hours, for hours.

Had I been a strange microbe with potentialities of deadly mischief to the Merchant Service I could not have been submitted to a more microscopic examination.

Greatly reassured by his apparent benevolence, I had been at first very alert in my answers. But at length the feeling of my brain getting addled crept upon me.

He extended the scrap of paper to me without a word, inclined his white head gravely to my parting bow. …

When I got out of the room I felt limply flat, like a squeezed lemon

, and the doorkeeper in his glass cage, where I stopped to get my hat and tip him a shilling, said:

Before I was half through with it he did some material damage to the ship. Directly I had grappled with the difficulty he caused another to present itself, and when that too was met he stuck another ship before me, creating a very dangerous situation.

I felt slightly outraged by this ingenuity in piling up trouble upon a man.

“I wouldn’t have got into that mess,” I suggested, mildly. “I could have seen that ship before.”

He gave a bitter half-laugh.

“You could always say your prayers.”

He got up, stretched himself, and yawned slightly. It was a sallow, strong, unamiable face. He put me in a surly, bored fashion through the usual questions as to lights and signals, and I escaped from the room thankfully—passed! Forty minutes!

giving a touch of human intimacy to the machinery of official relations.

I felt adopted. His experience was for me, too, as though he had been an ancestor.

Writing my long name (it has twelve letters) with laborious care on the slip of blue paper, he remarked:

I thanked him, and shut the door behind me definitely on the era of examinations. But that time I did not walk on air, as on the first two occasions.

I walked across the Hill of many beheadings with measured steps.

It was a fact, I said to myself, that I was now a British master mariner beyond a doubt.

“Il faut, cependant, faire attention à ne pas gâter sa vie.” I had never seen her face so close to mine before. She made my heart beat, and caused me to remain thoughtful for a whole evening.

Certainly one must, after all, take care not to spoil one’s life. But she did not know⁠—nobody could know⁠—how impossible that danger seemed to me.

There was a great solitude around us; the islets ahead, Monte Cristo and the Château d’If in full light, seemed to float towards us—so steady, so imperceptible was the progress of our boat.

“Keep her in the furrow of the moon,” the patron directed me in a quiet murmur, sitting down ponderously in the stern-sheets and reaching for his pipe.

The pilot station in weather like this was only a mile or two to the westward of the islets;