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heart of darkness quotes Flashcards

(109 cards)

1
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“The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails”

“luminous space”

“biggest, and the greatest, town on Earth”

“Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin– the great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time–from the Golden Hind to the Erebus and Terror”

“the very mist on the Essex marshes”

“They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith”

“We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories”

“the spark from the sacred fire. The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires”

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2
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“The Director of Companies was our captain and our host…He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified”
“The Lawyer–the best of old fellows”

“the bond of the sea, besides holding our hearts together through long periods of separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other’s yarns”

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3
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“He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an idol”
“the worst that could be said of him was that he did not represent his class”

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4
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“for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny.”

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5
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“to him, the meaning of an episode wa snot inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze,”

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6
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“darkness was here yesterday”
“the very end of the world, a sea the color of lead, a sky the color of smoke”
“sandbanks, marshes, forests, savages”
“They were no colonists, their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors”

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7
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“What redeems it is the idea only, An idea at the back of–something you can set up, bow down before and offer a sacrifice to..”

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8
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“When I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth”
“It fascinated me as a snake would a bird”
“The snake had charmed me”

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9
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“the original quarrel arose from a misunderstanding about some hens. Yes, two black hens. Fresleven–that was the fellows name, a Dane–thought himself wronged somehow in the bargain”

“he had been a couple of years already out there engaged in the noble cause, you know, and he probably felt the need at last of asserting his self-respect in some way”

“he whacked the old nigger mercilessly”
“made a tentative jab with a spear at the white man”

“What became of the hens I don’t know either”

“However, through this glorious affair I got my appointment”

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10
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“The grass growing through his ribs was tall enough to hide his bones. The supernatural being had not been touched after he fell”

“He had tied a bit of white worsted round his neck–Why? Where did he get it? Was it a badge–an ornament–a charm?

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11
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“In a very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes me think of a whited sepulcher”
“A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high houses, innumerable windows with venetian blinds, a dead silence”

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12
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“she turned round without a word and preceded me into a waiting-room”

“The slim one got up and walked straight at me–still knitting with downcast eyes, I began to think of getting out of her way just as you would for a somnambulist. She turned round without a word and preceded me into a waiting-room”

“the swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me”

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13
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“I began to feel slightly uneasy. Two youths with foolish and cheery countenances were being piloted over”

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14
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“From behind that structure came out an impression of pale plumpness in a frock-coat. The great man himself. He was five feet six, I should judge”

“his cravat was large and billowy, under a chin shaped like the toe of an old boot”

“he was an unshaven little man in a threadbare coat like a gaberdine, with his feet in sleepers”

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15
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“‘Ever any madness in your family?’ he asked, in a matter-of-fact tone. I felt very annoyed. ‘Is that question in the interests of science too?’ ‘It would be’, he said without taking notice of my irritation.”

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16
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“Pardon my questions, but you are the first Englishman coming under my observation…’ I hastened to assure him I was not in the least typical”

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17
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“It appeared, however, I was also one of the Workers, with a capital–you know. Something like an emissary of light”

“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”

“We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritence, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil”

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18
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“‘You forget, dear Charlie, that the laborer is worthy of his hire’ She said, brightly. It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are.”

“We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets worse”

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19
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“I left in a French steamer”

“The idleness of a passenger, my isolation amongst all these men with whom I had no point of contact”

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20
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“The voice of the surf heard now and then was a positive pleasure, like the speech of a brother”

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21
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“Their bodies streamed with perspiration; they had bone, muscle, a wild vitality an intense energy of movement.”

“I had a white companion too, not a bad chap, but rather too fleshy and with the exasperating habit of fainting on the hot hillsides”

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22
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“Pop, would go one of the eight-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech–and nothing happened”

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23
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“A heavy and dull detonation shook the ground, a puff of smoke came out of the cliff. No change appeared on the face of the rock. They were building a railway. The cliff was not in the way or anything; but this objectless blasting was all the work going on”

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24
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“these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law,”

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25
"They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages" "Behind this raw matter one of the reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work, strolled dispondently. He had a uniform jacket with one button off. Seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapont to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a distance. He was speedily reassured, and with a rascally grin, seemed to take me into partnership in his exalted trust."
26
"I am not particularly tender; I've had to strike and to fend off. I've had to resist and to attack sometimes.."
27
"I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly"
28
"I avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been digging on the slope, the purpose of which I found it impossible to divine."
29
"Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees, leaning against the trunks" "they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air"
30
"I met a white man, in such an unexpected elegance of get-up that in the first moment I took him for a sort of vision. He was amazing. I shook hands with his miracle"
31
"'He is a very remarkable person.' Further questions elicited from him that Mr. Kurtz was at present in charge of a trading post, in true-ivory country. Sends in as much ivory as all the others put together" "'Oh, he will go far, very far,' he began gain. 'He will be a somebody in the Administration before long. They, above--the Council in Europe, you know--mean him to be" "He is an emissary of pity, and science and progress. For the guidance of the cause intrusted to us by Europe, so to speak, higher intellgiences"
32
"A great silence around and above. Perhaps on some quiet night the tremor of far-off drums, sinking, swelling, a tremor vast, faint; a sound weird, appealing, suggestive and wild--and perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country"
33
"I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting. However, all that is to no purpose"
34
"the manager was commonplace in complexion, in features, in manners, and in voice. He was of middle size and of ordinary build" "He had no genius for organziing, for initiative, or for order even. He had no learning and no intelligence" "His position had come to him because he was never ill" "he was heard to say, 'Men who come out here should have no entrails'"
35
"these men strolling aimlessly about in the sunshine of the yard. They wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched insid ea rotten fence. The word 'ivory' rang in the air. You would think they were praying to it."
36
"the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion." "a cry, a very loud cry cry, as of infinite desolation, soared slowly in the opaque air...to me it seemed as though the mist itself had screamed" "The bush began to howl"
37
"The business intrusted to this fellow was the making of bricks; but there wasn't a fragment of a brick anywhere in the station. It seems he could not make bricks without something, it was not likely to be sent from Europe."
38
"The only real feeling was a desire to get appointed to a trading-post where ivory was to be had, so that they could earn percentages"
39
"Then I noticed a small sketch in oils, on a panel, representing a woman, draped and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch"
40
"I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemd to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt"
41
"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 flavor of mortality int he lies"
42
"Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment" "No, it is impossible, it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of one's existence. We live, as we dream, alone"
43
"There was nothing but that wretched, old, mangled steamboat I was leaning against" "the battered, twisted, ruined, tin-pot steamboat" "splashing, thumping, river-demon beating the water and breathing black smoke into the air"
44
"There it is before you---smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering 'Come and find out'" "the virgin forest" "The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight" "And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect." "We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there--there you could look at a thing monstrous and free"
45
"Each section headed by a donkey carrying a white man in new clothes and tan shoes. The devoted band called itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition. Their talk was the talk of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage"
46
"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"
46
"The mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage--who can tell?--but truth--truth stripped of its cloak of time"
47
"You wonder I didn't go ashore for a howl and a dance? I had no time. I had to mess about with white-lead and strips of woolen blanket helping to put bandages on those leaky steam-pipes" "His was an impenetrable darkness. But I had not much time to give him, because I was helping the engine-driver to take to pieces the leaky cylinders."
48
"at the first glance you could see there was a singleness of intention, an honest concern for the right way of going to work. The simple old sailor, with his talk of chains and purchases, made me forget the jungle and the pilgrims in a delicious sensation of having come upon something unmistakably real"
49
"it occurred to me that my speech or my silence would be a mere futility. What did it matter what anyone knew or ignored? What did it matter who was manager?"
50
"one of the pilgrims,--a little fat man, with sandy hair and red whiskers, who wore side-spring boots, and pink pyjamas tucked into his socks"
51
"as long as there was a piece of paper written over in accordance with some farcical law or other made down the river, it didn't enter anybody's head to trouble how they would live"
52
"they had given them every week three pieces of brass wire, and the theory was they were to buy their provisions with that currency in river-side villages. So, unless they swallowed the wire itself, or made loops of it to snare the fishes with, I don't see what good their extravagant salary could be to them"
53
"Why they didn't go for us, amazes me now when I think of it. They were big powerful men, with courage, with strength. I saw that something restraining, one of those human secrets that baffle probability, had come into play there. Restraint! I would just as soon have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a battlefield"
54
"The approach to this Kurtz grubbing for ivory in the wretched bush was beset by as many dangers as though he had been an enchanted princess sleeping in a fabulous castle"
55
"our eyes were of no more use to us than if we had been buried miles deep in a heap of cotton-wool. It felt like it too--choking, warm, stifling"
56
"He was the most unstable kind of fool I had ever seen"
57
"Sticks, little sticks, were flying about. Arrows, By Jove! We were being shot at!"
58
"The pilgrims had opened with their Winchesters, and were simply squirting lead into that bush" "'Say! We must have made a glorious slaughter of them in the bush. Eh? What do you think? Say?' He positively danced, the bloodthirsty little gingery beggar"
59
"The man stepped back swiftly, and fell upon my feet. The man had rolled on his back and stared striaght up at me; both his hands cluthed on that cane. It was the shaft of a spear."
60
"that was exactly what I had been looking forward to--a talk with Kurtz. I made the strange discovery that I had never imagined as doing, but as discoursing" "The point was in his being a gifted creature, and that of all his gifts the one that stood out pre-eminently, was his ability to talk"
61
"Here you all are, each moored with two good addresses, like a hulk with two anchors, a butcher round one corner, a policeman round another" "between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums"
62
"And the lofty frontal bone of Mr. Kurtz! The wilderness had patted him on the head, and, behold, it was like a ball--an ivory ball"
63
"'My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my--' everything belonged to him. The thing was to know what he belonged to."
64
"Your strenght comes in, the faith in your ability for the digging of unostentatious holes to bury the stuff in--your power of devotion not to yourself, but to an obscure, back-breaking business"
65
"His mother was half-English, his father was half-French. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz"
66
"The International Society for the SUppression of Savage Customs had intrusted him with the making of a report. It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too high-strung" "From that point he soared and took me with him. The peroration was magnificient, though difficult to remember. It gave me the notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence" "like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: 'Exterminate all the brutes!'"
67
"I was to have the care of his memory. I've done enough for it to give me the indisputable right to lay it, If I choose, for an everlasting rest in the dust-bin of progress"
68
"though I am not prepared to affirm the fellow was exactly worth the life we lost in getting to him. I missed my late helmsman awfully. The intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory--like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment" "His shoulders were pressed to my breast; I hugged him from behind desperately. Oh! he was heavy, heavy, heavier than any man on earth I should imagine"
69
"near the house half-adozen slim posts remained in a row, roughly trimmed, and with their upper ends ornamented with round carved balls"
70
"His aspect reminded me of something I had seen--something funny I had seen somewhere. Suddenly I got. He looked like a harlequin"
71
"His clothes had been made of some stuff that was brown holland probably, but it was covered with patches all over, with bright patches, blue, red and yellow. The sunshine made him look extremely gay and wonderfully neat withal. A beardless, boyish face, very fair, no features to speak of."
72
"'You dont talk with Mr. Kurtz, you listen to him.' He said with severe exaltation"
73
"As though he had absconded from a troupe of mimes, enthusiastic, fabulous. His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering"
74
"to all appearance indestructible solely by the virtue of his few years and of his unreflecting audacity. He surely wanted nothing from the wilderness but the space to breathe in and to push through"
75
"He declared he would shoot me unless I gave him the ivory and then cleared out of the country"
76
"There was no sign on the face of nature of this amazing tale that was not so much told as suggested to me in desolate exclamations"
77
"I had been struck at the distance by certain attempts at ornamentation, rather remarkable in the ruinous aspect of the place. there it was, black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids"
78
"There was nothing exactly profitable in these heads being there. They only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts."
79
"where pure, uncomplicated savagery was a positive relief, being something that had a right to exists in the sunshine. I suppose it did not occur to him Mr. Kurtz was no idol of mine"
80
"I saw the man on the stretcher sit up, lank and with an uplifted arm. I saw the thin arm extended commandingly, the lower jaw moving."
81
"I could see the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones of his arm waving. It was as though an animated image of death carved out of old ivory...I saw him open his mouth wide--it gave him a weirdly voracious aspect, as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him" "This shadow looked satiated and calm"
82
"A voice! a voice! It was grave, profound, vibrating, while the man did not seem capable of a whisper"
83
"She walked with measured steps..treading the earth proudly. She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificient. The colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul."
84
"swift shadows darted out on the earth, swept around the river, gathering the steamer into a shadowy embrace. A formidable silence hung over the scene"
85
"He stated with a good deal of formality that had we not been 'of the same profession', he would have kept the matter to himself without regard to consequences. 'I don't want any harm to happen to these whites her--but you are a brother seaman and--'"
86
"One of his pockets was bulging with cartridges, from the other peeped 'Towson's Inquiry', he seemed to think himself excellently well equiped for a renewed encounter with the wilderness"
87
"The knitting old woman with the cat obtruded herself upon my memory as a most improper person to be sitting at the other end of such an affair. I thought I would never get back to the steamer"
88
"I tried to break the spell--the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness--that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions"
89
"I've been telling you what we said--repeating the phrases we pronounced--but what's the good? They were common everyday words--the familiar, vague sounds exchanged on every waking day of life. They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams"
90
"Only the barbarous and superb woman did not so much as flinch"
91
"Kurtz discoursed. A voice! a voice! It rang deep to the very last."
92
"Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? 'The horror! The horror!"
93
"I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory"
94
"I found myself back in 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. They trespassed upon my thoughts"
95
"He became darkly menacing at last, and with much heat argued that the Company had the right to every bit of information about its 'terrritories'"
96
"Incidentally, he gave me to understand that Kurtz had been essentially a great musician"
97
"He could get himself to believe anything. He would have been a splendid leader of an extreme party 'What party?' I asked. 'Any party', answered the other. 'He was an extremist'"
98
"no manipulation of light and pose could have conveyed the delicate shade of truthfulness upon those features. She seemed ready to listen without mental reservation, without suspicion, without a thought for herself"
99
"I remembered his abject pleading, his abject threats, the colossal scale of his vile desires, the meanness, the torment, the tempestuous anguish of his soul"
100
"I had to wait in a lofty drawing-room with three long windows from floor to ceiling that were like three luminous and bedraped columns. The tall marble fireplace had a cold and monumental whiteness. A grand piano stood massively in a corner, with dark gleams on the flat surfaces like a somber and polished sarcophagus."
101
"She came forward, all in black, with a pale head, floating towards me in the dusk" "a white-haired secretarial head appeared and a skinny forefinger beckoned me into the sanctuary" "this narrative that seemed to shape itself without human lips in the heavy night-air of the river"
102
"I saw her and him in the same instant of time--his death and her sorrow--I saw her sorrow in the very moment of this death. Do you understand?"
103
"I had heard that her engagement with Kurtz had been disapproved by her people. He wasn't rich enough or something" "And indeed I don't know whether he had not been a pauper all his life. He had given me some reason to infer that it was his impatience of comparative poverty that drove him out there"
104
"'It was impossible not to-' 'Love him,' she finished eagerly, silencing me into an appalled dumbness"
105
"It is impossible that all this should be lost--that such a life should be sacrificed to leave nothing--but sorrow."
106
"Forgive me. I-I--have mourned so long in silence-in silence....You were with him--to the last? I think of his loneliness. Nobody near to understand him as I would have understood. Perhaps no one to hear...' 'To the very end,'I said shakily. 'I heard his very last words.....' I stopped in a fright
107
"an exulting and terrible cry, by the cry of inconceivable triump and of unspeakable pain. 'I knew it--I was sure!'...She knew. She was sure. It seemed to me that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle."
108
"the offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness"