James Joyce Quotes

James Joyce Quotes

His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their tale before.

You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too.

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

‎I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that is the only way of insuring one's immortality.

He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music.

Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?

and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.

The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails

God spoke to you by so many voices but you would not hear.

Interpretations of interpretations interpreted.

The soul ... has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.

All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light...

He is cured by faith who is sick of fate.

Can't bring back time. Like holding water in your hand.

Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.

Beauty: it curves, curves are beauty. Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno: curves the world admires.

YesIsaidyesyesyesyesyes...YesIsaidyes! andagainyesyesyes - Molly Bloom

He thought that he was sick in his heart if you could be sick in that place.

Shite and onions!

Deal with him, Hemingway!

To discover the mode of life or of art whereby my spirit could express itself in unfettered freedom.

The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question.

Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.

Don't you think there is a certain resemblance between the mystery of the Mass and what I am trying to do?...To give people some kind of intellectual pleasure or spiritual enjoyment by converting the bread of everyday life into something that has a permanent artistic life of its own.

To speak of these things and to try to understand their nature and, having understood it, to try slowly and humbly and constantly to express, to press out again, from the gross earth or what it brings forth, from sound and shape and colour which are the prison gates of our soul, an image of the beauty we have come to understand - that is art.

And if he had judged her harshly? If her life were a simple rosary of hours, her life simple and strange as a bird's life, gay in the morning, restless all day, tired at sundown? Her heart simple and willful as a bird's heart?

Oblige me by taking away that knife. I can't look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history.

What dreams would he have, not seeing. Life a dream for him. Where is the justice being born that way?

Non servirò ciò in cui non credo più, si chiami questo la casa, la patria o la Chiesa: e tenterò di esprimere me stesso in un qualunque modo di vita o di arte quanto più potrò liberamente e integralmente, adoperando per difendermi le sole armi che mi concedo di usare: il silenzio, l'esilio e l'astuzia.

(...) The new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Specch, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People.

And it was the din of all these hollow-sounding voices that made him halt irresolutely in the pursuit of phantoms. He gave them ear only for a time but he was happy only when he was far from them, beyond their call, alone or in the company of phantasmal comrades.

Never back a woman you defend, never get quit of a friend on whom you depend, never make face to a foe till he’s rife and never get stuck to another man’s pfife.

Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquillity sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms.

You find my words dark. Darkness is in our souls, do you not think?

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

You don't know yet what money is. Money is power, when you have lived as long as I have. I know, I know. If youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare say? Put money in thy purse.

If you can put your five fingers throught it, it is a gate, if not a door.

A dark horse riderless, bolts like a phantom past the winning post, his mane moonflowing, his eyeballs stars.

For that (the rapt one warns) is what papyr is meed of, made of, hides and hints and misses in prints.

One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.

She respected her husband in the same way as she respected the General Post Office, as something large, secure and fixed: and though she knew the small number of his talents she appreciated his abstract value as a male.

There is not past, no future; everything flows in an eternal present.

Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.

He laughed to free his mind from his mind's bondage.

To learn one must be humble. But life is the great teacher.

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