50 Important Quotes You Should Pay Attention to in Heart of Darkness

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#11: “One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing, in an intolerable and appalling manner, his brother phantom rested its forehead, as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of a massacre of a pestilence. 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 1 
• Techniques: Metaphor, imagery 

#12: “It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—this suspicion of their not being inhuman.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 2 
• Techniques: Epistrophe, colloquialism  

#13: “They howled, and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar.” 

• Character: Marley 
• Section: Part 2 
• Techniques: Anaphora, zoomorphism 

#14: “He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind-legs.” 

• Character: Marley 
• Section: Part 2 
• Techniques: Analogy 

#15: “Yes; I looked at them as you would on any human being, with a curiosity of their impulses, motives, capacities, weaknesses, when brought to the test of an inexorable physical necessity.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 2 
• Techniques: Asyndeton 

#16: “Perhaps you will think it passing strange this regret for a savage who was no more account than a grain of sand in a black Sahara.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 2 
• Techniques: Hyperbole 

#17: “There had been enemies, criminals, workers—and these were rebels. Those rebellious heads looked very subdued to me on their sticks.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 3 
• Techniques: Asyndeton, irony 

#18: “She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 3 
• Techniques: Imagery, polysyndeton  

Heart of Darkness Light and Dark Quotes

#19: “The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 1 
• Techniques: Hyperbole, pathetic fallacy 

#20: “They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now, – nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 1 
• Techniques: Metaphor, anaphora, alliteration 

#21: “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.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 1 
• Techniques: Asyndeton, imagery 

#22: “We live in the flicker—may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 1 
• Techniques: Exclamation, metaphor, motif 

#23: “I saw him extend his short flipper of an arm for a gesture that took in the forest, the creek the mud, the river—seemed to beckon with a dishonouring flourish before the sunlit face of the land a treacherous appeal to the lurking death, to the hidden evil, to the profound darkness of its heart.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 2 
• Techniques: Zoomorphism, anaphora, motif, imagery 

#24: “We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 2 
• Techniques: Motif, diacope 

#25: “There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 2 
• Techniques: Antithesis 

#26: “I looked around, and I don’t know why, but I assure you that never, never before, did this land, this river, this jungle, the very arch of this blazing sky, appear to me so hopeless and so dark, so impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 3 
• Techniques: Anaphora, imagery, epiphora, motif 

Heart of Darkness Quotes About Kurtz

#27: “Hadn’t I been told in all the tones of jealousy and admiration that he had collected, bartered, swindled, or stolen more ivory than all the other agents together?” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 2 
• Techniques: Rhetorical question, tautology, juxtaposition, symbolism 

#28: “But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 3 
• Techniques: Personification 

#29: “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.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 3 
• Techniques: Anaphora 

#30: “You should have heard him say, ‘My ivory.’ Oh, yes, I heard him. ‘My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my—’ everything belonged to him.” 

• Character: Marlow, Kurtz 
• Section: Part 3 
• Techniques: Dialogue, anaphora, symbolism 

#31: “He had kicked himself loose of the earth. Confound the man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 3 
• Techniques: Exclamation, metaphor, anaphora 

#32: “I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 3 
• Techniques: Anaphora 

#33: “His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 3 
• Techniques: Metaphor, analogy, motif 

#34: “It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 3 
• Techniques: Metaphor, symbolism  

#35: “I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror—of an intense and hopeless despair.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 3 
• Techniques: Anaphora, symbolism 

#36: “He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: ‘The horror! The horror!'” 

• Character: Marlow, Kurtz 
• Section: Part 3 
• Techniques: Dialogue, epizeuxis, anaphora 

#37: “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.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 3 
• Techniques: Tautology, anaphora 

#38: “But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 3 
• Techniques: Epiphora, exclamation, synecdoche, metaphor  

#39: “Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due? Hadn’t he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn’t. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark—too dark altogether.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 3 
• Techniques: Rhetorical question, epizeuxis 

 Heart of Darkness Quotes About Imperialism 

#40: “After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 1 
• Techniques: Irony 

#41: “They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force—nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 1 
• Techniques: Irony, analogy  

#42: “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 1 
• Techniques: Irony, understatement  

#43: “Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 1 
• Techniques: Asyndeton, irony, alliteration 

#44: “I’ve seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men – men, I tell you. 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 1 
• Techniques: Biblical allusion, anaphora, asyndeton, epizeuxis, exclamation 

#45: “‘Men who come out here should have no entrails.’” 

• Character: The Manager 
• Section: Part 1 
• Techniques: Dialogue, double entendre, symbolism 

#46: “They wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 1 
• Techniques: Simile, oxymoron, irony, allegory 

#47: “The word ‘ivory’ rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 1 
• Techniques: Auditory imagery, symbolism, anaphora 

#48: “It was as unreal as everything else—as the philanthropic pretence of the whole concern, as their talk, as their government, as their show of work.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 1 
• Techniques: Anaphora 

#49: “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.: 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 1 
• Techniques: Metaphor, symbolism 

#50: “The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 1 
• Techniques: Anaphora, metaphor, symbolism 

#51: “Ivory? I should think so. Heaps of it, stacks of it. The old mud shanty was bursting with it. You would think there was not a single tusk left either above or below the ground in the whole country.” 

• Character: Marlow 
• Section: Part 2 
• Techniques: Epistrophe, hypophora, hyperbole, symbolism  

Access 40 more quotes from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and our downloadable list!