Heart of Darkness Quotes

Imperialism
What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire to make money of course The word ivory rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it He had tied a bit of white worsted round his neck It looked startling roud his blac neck, this bit of white thread from beyond the seas Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees, leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair The work was going on. The work! And this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die. those heads on the stakes nothing exactly profitable in these heads being there. They only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole representing a woman, draped and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. The background was somber almost black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face was sinister I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking. Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a center for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing. But there is no disguising the fact, Mr Kurtz has done more harm than good

Women
Its queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own I (aunt) know the wife of a very high personage in the Administration, an d also a man who has lits of influence wild and gorgeous apparition of a woman She carried her head high She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her.

She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent like the wilderness fecund and mysterious She had a mature capacity for fidelity, for belief, for suffering My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river like somber and polished sarcophagus. Ah, but I believed in him more than any one on earth more than his own mother, more than himself. Nobody near to understand him as I would have understand I want I want something something to live with. The last word he pronounced was your name. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark too dark altogether My Intended, my station, my career, my ideas

Other Useful Quotes

You know, I hate and cant bear a lie it appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies. dull anger My anger subsided before a feeling of infinite pity. What saves us is efficiency the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force nothing to boast of, when you have it, since strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness and this also has been one of the dark places of the earth I was thinking of very old times, when the romans first came here. I arrived in a city that always makes me think of a white sepulchre I found myself back into the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams