Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad’s novella in which the seaman Marlow, on a yawl in the Thames estuary, tells of his journey up an African river in the service of a Belgian trading company to find Kurtz, its ivory agent at an inner station.

Start reading3 parts, about 39,000 words

Famous quotes

• “And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”

  Part IIn context

  • History

• To him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.

  Part IIn context

  • Writing

• They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force⁠—nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.

  Part IIn context

  • Power
  • War & Peace

• 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.

  Part IIn context

  • Power
  • Race

• You know I hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies⁠—which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world⁠—what I want to forget.

  Part IIn context

  • Truth & Lies

• No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence⁠—that which makes its truth, its meaning⁠—its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream⁠—alone.

  Part IIn context

  • Life & Death

• I don’t like work⁠—no man does⁠—but I like what is in the work⁠—the chance to find yourself. Your own reality⁠—for yourself, not for others⁠—what no other man can ever know.

  Part IIn context

  • Work

• To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe.

  Part IIn context

  • Money
  • Morality

• Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings.

  Part IIIn context

  • History
  • Nature

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

  Part IIIn context

  • Thinking

• No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze.

  Part IIIn context

  • Fear
  • Food

• The horror! The horror!

  Part IIIIn context

  • Fear
  • Life & Death

• ‘Mistah Kurtz⁠—he dead.’

  Part IIIIn context

  • Life & Death

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

  Part IIIIn context

  • Life & Death

• Perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible.

  Part IIIIn context

  • Life & Death
  • Truth & Lies
  • Wisdom

• The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky⁠—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

  Part IIIIn context

  • Nature

Contents

1. Part I
2. Part II
3. Part III