James Joyce Quotes

248 Sourced Quotes

A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk.

James Joyce
And when all was said and done the lies a fellow told about himself couldn't probably hold a proverbial candle to the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him.

James Joyce
To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life!

James Joyce
First, in the history of words there is much that indicates the history of men, and in comparing the speech of to-day with that ofyears ago, we have a useful illustration of the effect of external influences on the very words of a race.

James Joyce
Winds of May, that dance on the sea,
Dancing a ring-around in glee
From furrow to furrow, while overhead
The foam flies up to be garlanded,
In silvery arches spanning the air,
Saw you my true love anywhere?
Welladay! Welladay!
For the winds of May!
Love is unhappy when love is away!

James Joyce
The Irishman, finding himself in another environment, outside Ireland, very often knows how to make his worth felt. The economic and intellectual conditions of his homeland do not permit the individual to develop. The spirit of the country has been weakened by centuries of useless struggle and broken treaties. Individual initiative has been paralyzed by the influence and admonitions of the church, while the body has been shackled by peelers, duty officers and soldiers. No self-respecting person wants to stay in Ireland. Instead he will run from it, as if from a country that has been subjected to a visitation by an angry Jove.

James Joyce
Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.

James Joyce
Sometimes he caught himself listening to the sound of his own voice. He thought that in her eyes he would ascent to an angelical stature; and, as he attached the fervent nature of his companion more and more closely to him, he heard the strange impersonal voice which he recognised as his own, insisting on the soul's incurable lonliness. We cannot give ourselves, it said: we are our own.

James Joyce
And mine a shielded heart for her
Who gathers simples of the moon.

James Joyce
Save the trees of Ireland for the future men of Ireland on the fair hills of Eire, O.

James Joyce
White pudding and eggs and sausages and cups of tea! How simple and beautiful was life after all!

James Joyce
It was cold autumn weather, but in spite of the cold they wandered up and down the roads of the Park for nearly three hours. They agreed to break off their intercourse; every bond, he said, is a bond to sorrow.

James Joyce
Gentle lady, do not sing Sad songs about the end of love; Lay aside sadness and sing How love that passes is enough. Sing about the long deep sleep Of lovers that are dead, and how In the grave all love shall sleep: Love is aweary now.

James Joyce
Each lost soul will be a hell unto itself, the boundless fire raging in its very vitals.

James Joyce
Human society is the embodiment of changeless laws which the whimsicalities and circumstances of men and women involve and overwrap. The realm of literature is the realm of these accidental manners and humours--a spacious realm; and the true literary artist concerns himself mainly with them.

James Joyce
Phall if you but will, rise you must: and none so soon either shall the pharce for the nunce come to a setdown secular phoenish.

James Joyce
But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

James Joyce
Wait till the honeying of the lune, love! Die eve, little eve, die! We see that wonder in your eye. We'll meet again, we'll part once more. The spot I'll seek if the hour you'll find. My chart shines high where the blue milk's upset.

James Joyce
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.

James Joyce
Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory.

James Joyce