How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #1
His big, prominent eyes were not well adapted to winking. They were rather the sort that closes solemnly in slumber with majestic effect.
Undemonstrative and burly in a fat-pig style, Mr Verloc, without either rubbing his hands with satisfaction or winking skeptically at his thoughts, proceeded on his way. (2.1-2.2)
This early description of Verloc seems to be generous at first, saying that his laziness has a "majestic" quality to it. But in the next line, we find out that Verloc is burly in a "fat-pig style," which totally shakes us as readers. Conrad loves to throw in these drastic shifts of tone. He'll follow a gentle image with a rough one that seems to come out of nowhere. One of the reasons he does this is because his writing tends to be very dense, and he needs to keep your attention for every line, since it's easy to miss something important. Also, these sudden changes help to establish the balance of distance and closeness that Conrad always strikes between his narrator and characters. Just when you think the narrator has become sympathetic or admiring, he'll go and call the main character a fat pig.
Quote #2
"Bah!" said the latter. "What do you mean by getting out of condition like this? You haven't got even the physique of your profession. You—a member of the starving proletariat—never!" (2.39)
Mr. Vladimir tells Verloc he's way too fat, since anarchists are supposed to be poor and starving. Vladimir here might just be looking for reasons to be mean to Verloc and call him lazy, but he's actually got a strategic point in saying that Verloc's weight makes him less believable as an anarchist. Here, Conrad also shows off a bit of his humor, which can be tough to pick up at times because the dude is so gloomy all the time.
Quote #3
A bush of crinkly yellow hair topped [Ossipon's] red, freckled face, with a flattened nose and the prominent mouth cast in the rough mould of the Negro type. His almond-shaped eyes leered languidly over the high cheek-bones. He wore a grey flannel shirt, the loose ends of a black silk tie hung down the back of his chair. (3.13)
During Conrad's time, people like Ossipon who read Lombroso would've believed that black people were a less evolved form of human being. What this passage shows us, though, is the hypocrisy of Ossipon's belief in Lombroso, since Ossipon himself has all of the physical characteristics that Lombroso would have called "degenerate."