Quotation from: Lord Jim

Written by: Joseph Conrad


'I suppose I must have fallen into a sentimental mood; I only know that
I stood there long enough for the sense of utter solitude to get hold
of me so completely that all I had lately seen, all I had heard, and the
very human speech itself, seemed to have passed away out of existence,
living only for a while longer in my memory, as though I had been the
last of mankind. It was a strange and melancholy illusion, evolved
half-consciously like all our illusions, which I suspect only to be
visions of remote unattainable truth, seen dimly. This was, indeed, one
of the lost, forgotten, unknown places of the earth; I had looked under
its obscure surface; and I felt that when to-morrow I had left it for
ever, it would slip out of existence, to live only in my memory till I
myself passed into oblivion. I have that feeling about me now; perhaps
it is that feeling which has incited me to tell you the story, to try to
hand over to you, as it were, its very existence, its reality--the truth
disclosed in a moment of illusion.

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Old Dominion University CS Dept
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Created: 2007-2-22T12:35:29Z
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Part of a series of experiments in web preservation under the direction of Michael L. Nelson, Ph.D.