James Joyce Quotes

He laughed to free his mind from his mind's bondage.

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.

Sleep, where in the waste is the wisdom?

If you can put your five fingers throught it, it is a gate, if not a door.

A dark horse riderless, bolts like a phantom past the winning post, his mane moonflowing, his eyeballs stars.

For that (the rapt one warns) is what papyr is meed of, made of, hides and hints and misses in prints.

Early morning: set off at dawn. Travel round in front of the sun, steal a day's march on him. Keep it up for ever never grow a day older technically.

What was after the universe?Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began?

He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glasses.

Oblige me by taking away that knife. I can't look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history.

Never back a woman you defend, never get quit of a friend on whom you depend, never make face to a foe till he’s rife and never get stuck to another man’s pfife.

You find my words dark. Darkness is in our souls, do you not think?

Only big words for ordinary things on account of the sound.

Justice it means but it's everybody eating everyone else. That's what life is after all.

I smiled at him. America, I said quietly, just like that. What is it? The sweepings of every country including our own. Isn't that true? That's a fact.

Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquillity sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms.

Here's lumbos. Where misties swaddlum, where misches lodge none, where mystries pour kind on, O sleepy! So be yet!

And you’ll miss me more as the narrowing weeks wing by. Someday duly, oneday truly, twosday newly, till whensday.

Each imagining himself to be the first last and only alone, whereas he is neither first last nor last nor only not alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity.

Then, in that case, all the rest, all that I thought I thought and all that I felt I felt, all the rest before me now, in fact... O, give it up old chap! Sleep it off!

Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods.

Look at the woebegone walk of him. Eaten a bad egg. Poached eyes on ghost.

Three quarks for Muster Mark!

The light music of whisky falling into glasses made an agreeable interlude.

She was well primed with a good load of Delahunt's port under her bellyband.

The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue...

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.

Every life is 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.

The present is the now the here through which all future plunges to the past.

To say that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic merit, is no better than to say he is rheumatic or diabetic.

Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four places.

The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.

A man of genius makes no mistakes his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art it is the part the schools cannot recognize.