James Joyce Quotes

The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole Life to reading my works.

The State is concentric, but the individual is eccentric.

I'll tickle his catastrophe.

Theologians consider that it was the sin of pride, the sinful thought conceived in an instant: non serviam: I will not serve. That instant was his [Lucifer's] ruin.

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

My heart is quite calm now. I will go back.

It seems to me you do not care what banality a man expresses so long as he expresses it in Irish.

Always see a fellows weak point in his wife.

The Irish are people who will never have leaders, for at the great moment they always desert them. They have produced one skeleton--Parnell--never a man.

The studious silence of the library ... Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness.

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?

The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue.

If Ireland is to become a new Ireland she must first become European.

If there is any difficulty in what I write, it is because of the material I use. The thought is always simple.

Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without passing a pub.

O, dread and dire word. Eternity! What mind of man can understand it?

Desire's wind blasts the thorntree but after it becomes from a bramblebush to be a rose upon the rood of time.

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

What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?

Let us leave theories there and return to here's hear.

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

Does nobody understand?

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 coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo

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

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

Time is, time was, but time shall be no more.

Life is the great teacher.

He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible.

His eyes were dimmed with tears and, looking humbly up to heaven, he wept for the innocence he had lost.

In woman's womb word is made flesh but in the spirit of the maker all flesh that passes becomes the word that shall not pass away. This is the postcreation.

Heart of my heart, were it more, More would be laid at your feet.

All human history moves towards one great goal

He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life

British Beatitudes! ... Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs, battleships, buggery and bishops.

The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant's heart on the hillside.

[...] a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend.

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.

Interpretations of interpretations interpreted.

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.

Every bond is a bond to sorrow.

Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.

A nation is the same people living in the same place.

I care not if I live but a day and a night, so long as my deeds live after me.

There was no doubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could do nothing in Dublin.

When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who once.

Too excited to be genuinely happy

Love, yes. Word known to all men.

I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world.

Read your own obituary notice; they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.

As you are now so once were we.