HEART OF DARKNESS RIVER QUOTES

by

“The tranquil waterway leading to the heart of the African continent flowed somber under an overcast sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“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.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off forever from everything you had known once—somewhere—far away—in another existence perhaps.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to topple over the creek, to sweep every little man of us out of his little existence.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“This mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of a poor devil of a sub-sub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random allusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profane. Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As touching the ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording a glancing bird’s-eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations, including our own.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“There was a vast amount of red—but no shapes—and the glass shattered into fragments.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“And, while he thus reasoned and resolved, blackness settled on all things around them, as if the light of day had been unknown.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The air was thick, motionless, heavy, daughter of Death, slayer of sleep.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The river goes with me everywhere beyond the seas.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The multitude of islands, big and small, resembled in a way the communities scattered over the earth.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“It was the same stillness that reigned over all the land.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The impenetrable darkness of its heart.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“It seemed to draw him to itself inexorably as though he had been made for this very snare in which he had been caught.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The silence of the land went home to one’s very heart.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The murmurs of the tidal rivers lapped the shores with a lulling rhythm.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“It was the mark of his kinship with this vast and pitiless uproar.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The great river ran on, mysterious, mournful, and whispering somewhere far away.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The joyousness of the brook singing its song of life to the young day was like a symphony.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The stretch of water widened till it lost its translucency, becoming steely gray, deep, opaque, and so limitless that it seemed to sample all the shades of eternity.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The tide ran strong, bearing us downstream as in a restless dream.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Time, which sees all things, has found you for its own.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The river flows on flowing, night and day.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The river seemed to scream for fellowship, for arms to keep it company, for feet to caress its banks.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness