Joseph Conrad/merchant Navy

Famous quotes containing the words joseph conrad, joseph, conrad, merchant and/or navy:

    A puff of wind, a puff faint and tepid and laden with strange odours of blossoms, of aromatic wood, comes out the still night—the first sigh of the East on my face. That I can never forget. It was impalpable and enslaving, like a charm, like a whispered promise of mysterious delight.... The mysterious East faced me, perfumed like a flower, silent like death, dark like a grave.
    Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)

    The basic rule of human nature is that powerful people speak slowly and subservient people quickly—because if they don’t speak fast nobody will listen to them.
    Michael Caine [Maurice Joseph Micklewhite] (b. 1933)

    It is very difficult to be wholly joyous or wholly sad on this earth. The comic, when it is human, soon takes upon itself a face of pain; and some of our griefs ... have their source in weaknesses which must be recognized with smiling compassion as the common inheritance of us all.
    —Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)

    People run away from the name subsidy. It is a subsidy. I am not afraid to call it so. It is paid for the purpose of giving a merchant marine to the whole country so that the trade of the whole country will be benefitted thereby, and the men running the ships will of course make a reasonable profit.... Unless we have a merchant marine, our navy if called upon for offensive or defensive work is going to be most defective.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    I wish to reiterate all the reasons which [my predecessor] has presented in favor of the policy of maintaining a strong navy as the best conservator of our peace with other nations and the best means of securing respect for the assertion of our rights of the defense of our interests, and the exercise of our influence in international matters.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)