Looking for the best and inspirational James Joyce quotes?
James Joyce is one of the most celebrated Irish authors of the twentieth century. He is best known for writing novels that are often considered among the most important works of modernist literature.
He was born in Dublin, Ireland, on 2 February 1882. The son of an Englishman and an Irishwoman, he grew up surrounded by people who were not of his race. This was a common occurrence at the time due to the influx of immigrants to Ireland and England from other parts of Europe. James Joyce loved to write ever since he was a child, often crafting short stories about his family members.
He is considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.
Check out his most inspiring quotes, which describe the power of words in daily life.
69 Inspirational James Joyce Quotes
“Write it, damn you, write it! What else are you good for?”
“Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory.”
“This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I shall express myself as I am.”
“When I die, Dublin will be written on my heart.”
“Love between man and woman is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse, and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.”
“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”
“Absence, the highest form of presence.”
“Too excited to be genuinely happy”
“People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riled them was a bite from a sheep.”
“Time is, time was, but time shall be no more.”
“Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.”
“The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole Life to reading my works.”
“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 is the only way of insuring one’s immortality.”
“Though their life was modest, they believed in eating well.”
“All Moanday, Tearday, Wailsday, Thumpsday, Frightday, Shatterday.”
“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.”
“There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.”
“Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.”
“What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is my own.”
“A nation is the same people living in the same place.”
“Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.”
“To discover the mode of life or of art whereby my spirit could express itself in unfettered freedom.”
“Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not.”
“To learn one must be humble. But life is the great teacher.”
“Your battles inspired me – not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.”
“The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea.”
“Can’t bring back time. Like holding water in your hand.”
“But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.”
“Let us leave theories there and return to here’s hear.”
“Life is too short to read a bad book.”
“Shut your eyes and see.”
“Satan, really, is the romantic youth of Jesus re-appearing for a moment.”
“Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.”
“Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”
“A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.”
“Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not.”
“Be just before you are generous.”
“Thought is the thought of thought.”
“Mistakes are the portals of discovery.”
“Every jackass going the roads thinks he has ideas.”
“You forget that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence: and the kingdom of heaven is like a woman.”
“The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.”
“The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.”
“It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born.”
“Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.”
“First we feel. Then we fall.”
“Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.”
“Men are governed by lines of intellect – women: by curves of emotion.”
“Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.”
“I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.”
“He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music.”
“I think a child should be allowed to take his father’s or mother’s name at will on coming of age. Paternity is a legal fiction.”
“The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant’s heart on the hillside.”
“No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.”
“I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.”
“Every bond is a bond to sorrow.”
“They lived and laughed and loved and left.”
“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.”
“God made food; the devil the cooks.”
“Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?”
“The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.”
“Read your own obituary notice; they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.”
“The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.”
“Love loves to love love.”
“All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light.”
“Men are governed by lines of intellect – women by curves of emotion.”
“If it is thus, I ask emphatically whence comes this thusness.”
“As you are now so once were we.”
“Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.” “You can still die when the sun is shining.”
