“It is very difficult to be wholly joyous or wholly sad on this earth.”

“The cabman looked at the pieces of silver, which, appearing very minute in his big, grimy palm, symbolised the insignificant results which reward the ambitious courage and toil of a mankind whose day is short on this earth of evil.”

“And, don't you see, the terror of the position was not in being knocked on the head - though I had a very lively sense of that danger, too - but in this, that I had to deal with a being to whom I could not appeal in the name of anything high or low. I had, even like the niggers, to invoke him - himself - his own exalted and incredible degradation. There was nothing either above or below him, and I knew it. He had kicked himself loose of the earth. Confound the man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces. He was alone, and I before him did not know whether I stood on the ground of floated in the air.”

“Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.”

“In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent.”

“We live in the flicker - may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling!”

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