James Joyce Quotes – Insightful Words from a Literary Genius
I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.
Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
Love loves to love love.
Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives.
A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
Shut your eyes and see.
I am, a stride at a time.
A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.
My mouth is full of decayed teeth and my soul of decayed ambitions.
I fear those big words.
In the particular is contained the universal.
His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide.
He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music.
I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use — silence, exile, and cunning.
A sister is more than a sidekick. She’s a soulmate who keeps you grounded and loves you unconditionally.
Mother, you have done me good to be born!
Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.
A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.
And yes, I will give you the key to my heart. Because with you, I don’t need a lock.
His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
A jealous lover of human liberty, deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.
Love loves to love love.
I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use — silence, exile, and cunning.
He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible.
I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can.
The curves of your lips rewrite history.
He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music.
Shut your eyes and see.
When you fall in love with the right person, you realize that love transcends physical appearances.
Better pass by that temple once and for all, and burn its wood to free yourself from its spell. You will still remain a loyal believer in poetry.
Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.
Every night, as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the catechism.
Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.
My mind rejects the whole fucking idea; it is violently opposed to sense.
Her soul swooned slowly as she heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
If Ireland is to become a new Ireland, she must first become European.
He wanted to cry quietly, but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad—like music.
Every morning I woke in fright and looked for my father. I am happy to say that I bore up with all the heroism of a Norman.
I wish I was a flower. Or maybe a stone. Something perfectly silent, perfectly still.
Sail forth – steer for the deep waters only. Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee and thou with me.
Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music.
You are too young even to know how strange the world looks when you’re not sure of anything.
A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.
Better pass by that temple once and for all, and burn its wood to free yourself from its spell. You will still remain a loyal believer in poetry.
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.
Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.
The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.
A sister is both your mirror – and your opposite.