Henry Birnbaum

“My last words about Jim shall be few. I affirm he had achieved greatness; but the thing would be dwarfed in the telling, or rather in the hearing. Frankly, it is not my words that I mistrust but your minds. I could be eloquent were I not afraid you fellows had starved your imaginations to feed your bodies. I do not mean to be offensive; it is respectable to have no illusions — and safe — and profitable — and dull. Yet you, too, in your time must have known the intensity of life, that light of glamour created in the shock of trifles, as amazing as the glow of sparks struck from a cold stone — and as short-lived, alas!”
― Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

“Denn man kann sich nicht ändern und noch den Gefühlen der Person unterstehen, die man nicht mehr ist.”
― Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

“Unhappy Europe! Thou shalt perish by the moral insanity of thy children!”
― Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

“He felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness - the sense that is where we really belong.”
― Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter