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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: nature, and then she will stand by you faithfully in the unceasing
struggle with forces wherein defeat is no shame. It is a serious
relation, that in which a man stands to his ship. She has her
rights as though she could breathe and speak; and, indeed, there
are ships that, for the right man, will do anything but speak, as
the saying goes.
A ship is not a slave. You must make her easy in a seaway, you
must never forget that you owe her the fullest share of your
thought, of your skill, of your self-love. If you remember that
obligation, naturally and without effort, as if it were an
instinctive feeling of your inner life, she will sail, stay, run
The Mirror of the Sea |
