Lord Jim Quotes

Find the perfect quote to float your boat. Shmoop breaks down key quotations from Lord Jim.

Language and Communication Quotes

A month or so afterwards, when Jim, in answer to pointed questions, tried to tell honestly the truth of this experience, he said, speaking of the ship: 'She went over whatever it was as easy as a s...

Choices Quotes

He was anxious to make this clear. This had not been a common affair, everything in it had been of the utmost importance, and fortunately he remembered everything. (4.6)

Memory and the Past Quotes

Marlow's body, extended at rest in the seat, would become very still, as though his spirit had winged its way back into the lapse of time and were speaking through his lips from the past. (4.11)

Men and Masculinity Quotes

"They were the best parts of life, its secret truth, its hidden reality. They had a gorgeous virility, the charm of vagueness, they passed before him with a heroic tread [...]" (3.4)

Guilt and Blame Quotes

"He stood elevated in the witness-box, with burning cheeks in a cool lofty room [...]" (4.1)

Respect and Reputation Quotes

"You must know that everybody connected in any way with the sea was there, because the affair had been notorious for days, ever since that mysterious cable message came from Aden to start us all ca...

Principles Quotes

He was gentlemanly, steady, tractable, with a thorough knowledge of his duties; and in time, when yet very young, he became chief mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested by those event...

Youth Quotes

On the lower deck in the babel of two hundred voices he would forget himself, and beforehand live in his mind the sea-life of light literature. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutt...

Exile Quotes

His incognito, which had as many holes as a sieve, was not meant to hide a personality but a fact. When the fact broke through the incognito he would leave suddenly the seaport where he happened to...

Foreignness and the Other Quotes

"There were only two other patients in the white men's ward: the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg [...] and a kind of railway contractor from a neighbouring province, afflicted by some m...