James Joyce Quotes

248 Sourced Quotes

The cluekey to a worldroom beyond the roomwhorld, for scarce one, or pathetically few of his dode canal sammenlivers cared seriously or for long to doubt with Kurt Iuld van Dijke (the gravitational pull perceived by certain fixed residents and the capture of uncertain comets chancedrifting through our system suggesting the authenticitatem of his aliquitudinis) he canonicity of his existence as a tesseract. Be still, O quick! Speak him dumb! Hush ye fronds of Ulma!

James Joyce
Ineluctable modality of the visible; at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read.

James Joyce
Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not.

James Joyce
Like the tender fires of stars moments of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of, broke upon and illuminated his memory.

James Joyce
One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead plot.

James Joyce
For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.

James Joyce
He comes into the world God knows how, walks on the water, gets out of his grave and goes up off the Hill of Howth. What drivel is this?

James Joyce
O thanks be to the great God I got somebody to give me what I badly wanted to put some heart up into me youve no chances at all inthis place like you used long ago I wish somebody would write me a loveletter....

James Joyce
By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or memorable phrase of the mind itself. He believed it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care (saving them for later use, that is), seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments.

James Joyce
The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.

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

James Joyce
I am quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors and paste man for that seems to me a harsh but not unjust description

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

James Joyce
Three quarks for Muster Mark! Sure he hasn't got much of a bark And sure any he has it's all beside the mark.

James Joyce
I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.

James Joyce
In one letter that he had written to her then he had said: Why is it that words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?

James Joyce
Very gratefully, with grateful appreciation, with sincere appreciative gratitude, in appreciatively grateful sincerity of regret, he declined.

James Joyce
What did it avail to pray when he knew his soul lusted after its own destruction?

James Joyce
Satan, really, is the romantic youth of Jesus re-appearing for a moment.

James Joyce
We are all born in the same way but we all die in different ways.

James Joyce
Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then. Why? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes your character.

James Joyce
(...) You cruel creature, little mite of a thing with a heart the size of a fullstop.

James Joyce
White roses and red roses: those were beautiful colours to think of.

James Joyce
I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

James Joyce
By his monstrous way of life he seemed to have put himself beyond the limits of reality. Nothing moved him or spoke to him from the real world unless he heard it in an echo of the infuriated cries within him.

James Joyce