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James Joyce
88 quotes
“Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality. It speaks of what seems fantastic and unreal to those who have lost the simple intuitions which are the test of reality; and, as it is often found at war with its age, so it makes no account of history, which is fabled by the daughters of memory.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) first seen 1902 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: James Clarence Mangan" (1902), a lecture on Mangan delivered at the Literary and Historical Society, University College, Dublin (1 February 1902) and printed in the college magazine St. Stephen's
“Every age must look for its sanction to its poetry and philosophy, for in these the human mind, as it looks backward or forward, attains to an eternal state.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) first seen 1902 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: James Clarence Mangan" (1902)
“Beauty, the splendour of truth, is a gracious presence when the imagination contemplates intensely the truth of its own being or the visible world, and the spirit which proceeds out of truth and beauty is the holy spirit of joy. These are realities and these alone give and sustain life.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) first seen 1902 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: James Clarence Mangan" (1902)
“I want to achieve myself—little or great as I may be—for I know that there is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to my church as a human being, and accordingly I am going to Paris.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) first seen 1902 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Augusta Gregory (November 1902), from James Joyce by Richard Ellmann (1959) [Oxford University Press, 1983 edition, ] (p. 107)
“All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light. And though I seem to have been driven out of my country here as a misbeliever I have found no man yet with a faith like mine.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) first seen 1902 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Augusta Gregory (November 1902), from James Joyce by Richard Ellmann (1959) [Oxford University Press, 1983 edition, ] (p. 107)
“My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair? My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our civilization, bequeathed to us by fierce adventurers, eaters of meat and hunters, is so full of hurry and combat, so busy about many things which perhaps are of no importance, that it cannot but see something feeble in a civilization which smiles as it refuses to make the battlefield the test of excellence.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) first seen 1903 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Suave Philosophy," in Daily Express, Dublin (6 February 1903), printed in James Joyce: Occasional, Critical and Political Writing (2002) edited by Kevin Barry [Oxford University Press, ], p. 67
“Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) first seen 1903 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Notebook entry, Paris (28 March 1903), printed in James Joyce: Occasional, Critical and Political Writing (2002) edited by Kevin Barry [Oxford University Press, 2002, ], p. 104
“I confess that I do not see what good it does to fulminate against the English tyranny while the Roman tyranny occupies the palace of the soul.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) first seen 1907 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages," lecture, Università Popolare, Trieste (27 April 1907), printed in James Joyce: Occasional, Critical and Political Writing (2002) edited by Kevin Barry [Oxford University Press, 2002…
“To say that a great genius is half-mad, while recognizing his artistic prowess, is worth as much as saying that he was rheumatic, or that he suffered from diabetes. Madness, in fact, is a medical expression to which a balanced critic should pay no more heed than he would to the accusation of heresy brought by the theologian, or to the accusation of immorality brought by the public prosecutor.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Realism and Idealism in English Literature (Daniel Defoe - William Blake)," lecture, Università Popolare, Trieste (February 27-28, 1912), printed in James Joyce: Occasional, Critical and Political Writing (2002) edited …
“Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honoured by posterity because he was the last to discover America.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Mirage of the Fisherman of Aran: England's Safety Valve in Case of War," Piccolo della Sera (Trieste, 5 September 1912), printed in James Joyce: Occasional, Critical and Political Writing (2002) edited by Kevin Barr…
“Love (understood as the desire of good for another) is in fact so unnatural a phenomenon that it can scarcely repeat itself, the soul being unable to become virgin again and not having energy enough to cast itself out again into the ocean of another's soul.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Notes (1913) made by Joyce for his play Exiles
“You forget that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence: and the kingdom of heaven is like a woman.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Exiles (1915), Act II
“Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Fanny Guillermet (Zurich, 5 September 1918)
“I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Said in conversation with Frank Budgen, Zurich, 1918, as told by Budgen in his book James Joyce and the Making of "Ulysses" (1934), ch. IV
“The pity is the public will demand and find a moral in my book — or worse they may take it in some more serious way, and on the honor of a gentleman, there is not one single serious line in it.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To Djuna Barnes, in an interview published in Vanity Fair (March 1922)
“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 (1882–1941) first seen 1926 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Referring to Finnegans Wake in a letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver (24 November 1926)
“Does nobody understand?”
James Joyce (1882–1941) first seen 1941 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last words (January 1941)
“If I gave it all up immediately, I'd lose my immortality. 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's the only way of insuring one's immortality.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Joyce's reply for a request for a plan of Ulysses, as quoted in James Joyce (1959) by Richard Ellmann
“The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole Life to reading my works.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Max Eastman in Harper's Magazine, as quoted in James Joyce (1959) by Richard Ellmann. Eastman noted "He smiled as he said that — smiled, and then repeated it.
“My words in her mind: cold polished stones sinking through a quagmire.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Giacomo Joyce (1968)
“When I hear the word "stream" uttered with such a revolting primness, what I think of is urine and not the contemporary novel. And besides, it isn't new, it is far from the dernier cri. Shakespeare used it continually, much too much in my opinion, and there's Tristram Shandy, not to mention the Agamemnon.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Said in conversation with Frederic Prokosch and quoted in Prokosch's Voices: A Memoir (1983), "At Sylvia’s." Joyce was replying to Prokosch's statement that Molly Bloom’s monologue in Ulysses was written as a stream of …
“There is not past, no future; everything flows in an eternal present.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To Jacques Mercanton, on the structure of Ulysses, as quoted in James Joyce: The Critical Heritage (1997) by Robert H. Deming, p. 22
“I laugh at it today, now that I have had all the good of it. Let the bridge blow up, provided I have got my troops across... Nonetheless, that book was a terrible risk. A transparent leaf separates it from madness.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Ulysses, as quoted in James Joyce: The Critical Heritage (1997) by Robert H. Deming, p. 22
“I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Robinson Crusoe] is the true prototype of the British colonist, as Friday (the trusty slave who arrives on an unlucky day) is the symbol of the subject races. The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence; the unconscious cruelty; the persistence; the slow yet efficient intelligence; the sexual apathy; the practical, well-balanced religiousness; the calculating taciturnity.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: James Joyce, “Daniel Defoe,” translated from Italian manuscript and edited by Joseph Prescott, Buffalo Studies 1 (1964): 24-25
“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 (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cited in Richard Ellmann (1983) James Joyce: New and Revised Edition, p. 505.
“Every night as I gazed up at the window I said to myself softly 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. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She dealt with moral problems the way a cleaver deals with meat: and in this case she had made up her mind.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was not sure what idea he wished to express but the thought that a poetic moment had touched upon him took life within him like an infant hope. He stepped onward bravely.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet's soul. Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament, he thought, but it was a melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and simple joy. If he could give expression to it in a book of poems perhaps men would listen.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everything in Paris is gay”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But there was no harshness in the eyes which, looking at the world from under their tawny eyebrows, gave the impression of a man ever alert to greet a redeeming instinct in others but often disappointed. He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One of his sentences, written two months after his last interview with Mrs. Sinico, read: Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And why couldn't he have a voice too? asked Freddy Malins sharply. Is it because he's only a black? Nobody answered this question and Mary Jane led the table back to the legitimate opera.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Dead" (adapted into a 1987 film), p. 198 (Penguin Books 1976 edition).
“I know all about the honour of God, Mary Jane, but I think it's not at all honourable for the pope to turn out the women out of the choirs that have slaved there all their lives and put little whipper-snappers of boys over their heads. I suppose it is for the good of the Church if the pope does it. But it's not just, Mary Jane, and it's not right.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don't spin it out too long long breath he breath long life, soaring high, high resplendent, aflame, crowned, high in the effulgence symbolistic, high, of the ethereal bosom, high, of the high vast irradiation everywhere all soaring all around about the all, the endlessnessnessness... (271)”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit. (683)”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(Of Shakespeare) A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery (243)”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Boor, bond of thy herd, Tonight stretch full by the fire! I bleed by the black stream For my torn bough!”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Loveward above the glancing oar”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Frail the white rose and frail are Her hands that gave”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How soft, how sad his voice is ever calling, Ever unanswered, and the dark rain falling, Then as now.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fragrant hair, Falling as through the silence falleth now Dusk of the air.”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Around us fear, descending Darkness of fear above”
James Joyce (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source