Heart of Darkness

"He was hollow at the core."

"He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision,—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath."

"I heard on all sides nothing but expressions of unbounded admiration and a desire to touch the hem of my robe."

"The horror! The horror!"

"Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags—that's what he wanted."

"He had come out equipped with moral ideas of some sort."

"Restraint! I would have restrained myself."

"The mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future."

"Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world."

"There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies."

"I don't like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work,—the chance to find yourself."

"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."

"We live as we dream—alone."

"His was an impenetrable darkness."

"The women is out of it—completely."

"By heavens! it is incredible."

"It was as simple as that—and terrible."

"I seemed to see Kurtz for the first time."

"The very essence of his long exile among these people."

"An appeal to something high in his nature."

"The same mysterious machinery of aggressive conquest."

"I have no clear picture of it now."

"This initiation, or whatever you would like to call it, had its charm."

"You can't understand. How could you?"

"I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine."

"Everything else was false, deceptive, thin like a soap bubble."

"He was very little more than a voice."

"The wilderness had patted him on the head."

"They had come out there to get a lot of ivory, and not to learn anything."

"I became aware of the devoted attention with which he listened."