How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #1
Born of industrious parents for a life of toil, he had embraced indolence from an impulse as profound, as inexplicable and as imperious as the impulse which directs a mans preference for one particular woman in a given thousand. He was too lazy even for a mere demagogue, for a workman orator, for a leader of labour. It was too much trouble. He required a more perfect form of ease […] (2.1)
Conrad almost browbeats you when it comes to showing that Verloc is a really lazy guy. And you'd think that in a fair society, Verloc would be punished for his laziness. But instead, he actually makes a very good living at doing… nothing. He came from very hardworking parents, but there's this basic laziness in him that the narrator doesn't really know how to describe. Verloc's sense of entitlement is so strong he's actually willing to plant a bomb to protect his easy life. Here, you get a real sense of what a leech Verloc is, even though he doesn't tend to think of himself as a bad guy. It's just that when something tries to come between him and his idle life, he's like a mother wolf protecting a cub.
Quote #2
[Verloc] trod the pavement heavily with his shiny boots, and his general get-up was that of a well-to-do mechanic in business for himself. He might have been anything from a picture-frame maker to a locksmith; an employer of labour in a small way. But there was also about him an indescribable air which no mechanic could have acquired in the practice of his handicraft […]. (2.2)
Mr. Verloc looks like he's some sort of middle-class employer, but carries himself in a way that no honest, hard-working man would. He gives off a vibe that's only given off by people who make their money off of humanity's darkest desires. In this case, Verloc makes his money by deceiving people and selling them pornography. There's a cynicism to him that makes him different from other people in his social class, and this might actually be an indirect compliment paid to the middle class on Conrad's part. Then again, Conrad might also be suggesting that Verloc's cynicism has made him stronger than these other people, because their morals keep them from making even more money.
Quote #3
Mr Vladimir, First Secretary, had a drawing-room reputation as an agreeable and entertaining man. He was something of a favourite in society. His wit consisted in discovering droll connections between incongruous ideas. (2.27).
In this passage, Conrad calls out high society for being totally superficial. A dude like Mr. Vladimir is trained in the art of getting into people's good books, and there's a good chance that no one in London's high society even knows where he comes from. But hey, the guy know show to tell a joke, and this make him a favorite in the lavish "drawing-rooms" of the idle rich.
Quote #4
"History is dominated and determined by the tool and the production—by the force of economic conditions. Capitalism has made socialism, and the laws made by the capitalist for the protection of property are responsible for anarchism." (3.1)
Riffing on straight Marxism, Michaelis argues that people's ideas and beliefs don't really have any impact on how the world is run. What matters is who's got the money and who doesn't. You can spend your whole life trying to change the way people think; but you won't make any real impact until you change the amount of cash in their wallets. The fact that this speech is coming from Michaelis, though, almost dooms these ideas from the get-go. Michaelis is someone who believes what he says, but lacks any practical way of bringing his ideas to the real world.
Quote #5
[Michaelis] optimism had begun to flow from his lips. He saw Capitalism doomed in its cradle, born with the poison of the principle of competition in its system. The great capitalists devouring the little capitalists, concentrating the power and the tools of production in great masses, perfecting industrial processes, and in the madness of self-aggrandizement only preparing, organizing, enriching, making ready the lawful inheritance of the suffering proletariat. (3.32)
According to Michaelis, capitalism is doomed to destroy itself because it can never make a peaceful society. The reason it can't create peace is because the whole system is based on the idea of competition, which means that you cant get things for yourself without taking them away from others. It's like a game of poker. There'll always be losers, which means there'll always be really angry people. At the end of the day, though, Conrad doesn't seem to think that anarchism or Marxism are worthwhile alternatives.
Quote #6
Married young and splendidly at some remote epoch of the past, she had had for a time a close view of great affairs, and even of some great men. She herself was a great lady. Old now in the number of her years, she had that sort of exceptional temperament which defines time with scornful disregard, as if it were a rather vulgar convention submitted to by the mass of inferior mankind. (6.1)
Here, you really see Conrad spoofing the upper classes of English society, especially through the great lady who's decided to take care of Michaelis. Lines like these really tend to make this woman into a caricature of wealthy privilege, especially when you consider that she inherited all of her wealth from her dead husband. She even thinks that worrying about time is gross, since time is a concern for people who need to worry about working. That said, Conrad's narrator also says some pretty nice things about this woman, because the guy just cant bear to let us get settled in our opinions. That'd be too easy.
Quote #7
That made the groundless fame of his condemnation; the fame of his release was made for him on no better grounds by people who wished to exploit the sentimental aspect of his imprisonment either for purposes of their own or for no intelligible purpose. (6.3)
Michaelis went to jail unjustly, but that's not the reason he got released. He was released because some people in really influential positions decided to make him into a symbol for whatever the heck they believed in. Others helped get him out for reasons they don't even understand. This passage shows just how much the personal whims of rich people influence the lives of working-class people like Michaelis. Again, Conrad pokes fun and even shows some anger at the upper classes, who treat people like Michaelis as pieces on a Monopoly board more than human beings. Then again, it'll probably take you longer to finish a game of Monopoly than it will to finish this novel.
Quote #8
From the head, set upward on a thick neck, the eyes, with puffy lower lids, stared with a haughty droop on each side of a hooked, aggressive nose, nobly salient in the vast pale circumference of the face. A shiny silk hat and a pair of worn gloves lying ready at the end of a long table looked expanded, too, enormous. (7.8)
Apart from Karl Yundt, Sir Ethelred is probably the most ungenerously described character in this novel (at least in terms of physical appearance). Conrad seems to be at his happiest as a writer when he writes about how fat Sir Ethelred is. As is often the case, Conrad focuses more on a dude's appearance when he has doesn't have a lot to say about the guy's inner thoughts. Sir Ethelred is an entitled, fat, rich man in the same way that water is wet. He's just there, and Conrad leaves it to us to decide whether we should laugh at him.
Quote #9
Not a murmur nor even a movement hinted at interruption. The great Personage might have been the statue of one of his own princely ancestors stripped of a Crusaders war harness, and put into an ill-fitting frock coat. (7.23)
Sir Ethelred is a really influential man, not because he's worked his way up in the world, but because some ancestor of his did a great thing in some battle hundreds of years ago. Sir Ethelred's sense of entitlement probably comes from the fact that his family has probably been upper crust for centuries. This satirical point by Conrad is brought home by the suggestion that instead of wearing a suit of armor, Ethelred wears a frock-coat. Just in case the point wasn't clear, Conrad's suggesting that (gasp) British society is pretty pathetic.
Quote #10
Till they came to the door of the great man's room, Toodles preserved a scandalized and solemn silence, as though he were offended with the Assistant Commissioner for exposing such an unsavory and disturbing fact. It revolutionized his idea of the Explorers' Clubs extreme selectness, of its social purity. (10.24)
After hearing that a member of the posh Explorers Club has been involved in criminal affairs, the secretary named Toodles is totally scandalized. He even gets mad at the Assistant Commissioner for telling him this information. Toodles is a young man who totally buys into the British status quo, which clearly says that upper-class people are above the filthy affairs of criminals.